IG Index

Don't remember the details of the debacle Steve, but my point was that if IG treated the shorts differently to the longs - and did do deliberately AND to IG's advanatge - AND if they did so outside their T&C - the FSA might be interested.

That's an awful lot of ANDs and IFs....
 
Remember that IG is now under new ownership and that the monies payed for the company have to be reapaid.The FSA is investigating one of the other SB companies which has a habit of shutting down completely when it is about to take a big hit and/or will stop a punter losing a lucrative trade as it starts to retrace.

The FSA investigator is Chris Devline who you should contact at [email protected]

It is important that we all make a habit of bringing these incedents to the attention of the FSA. The SB companies are Bookmakers not Brokers as they like us all to believe.

The best way to trade is with eMini Futures. The narrow spread enables scalping which is quite easy given a little bit of velocity and being offshore. can apparently be beneficial.
 
Phil, I couldn’t agree more. The more facts that badly treated customers can send to the FSA the better. The people at the FSA are only human after all.
They can’t be expected to make up rules and regulations to protect customers if they have no idea how they are being abused.

The more and more I look into my own particular case of mistreatment the more I see how the spreadbet companies are angling themselves to gain an even bigger advantage over customers. I’ve recently been reviewing some of the different Terms and Conditions that some of the different companies have. Despite the fact that most companies openly advertise things along the lines of ‘fast, live, streaming prices’ , ‘super fast conformation’ and ‘the price you see on the screen is the price you get’, most companies later seek, in their small print (T&C) to shield themselves from any obligation relating to prices quoted within their own websites. Some even go as far as to say in their T&C “We are at liberty to reject any instruction at anytime for any reason” (or words to that effect). This, in my opinion raises some very serious issues for a number of reasons.
Firstly, it can be argued that in order to get a customer to open and maintain an account a company has made claims in its advertising to indicate to that customer would, in some way, benefit from trading with that company.
In simple terms, when advertising a product or service a particular company prints ‘claims’ about its product / service which purposefully make the potential customer assume that that particular companies product / service is in someway superior. Because of this it can clearly been seen that the particular company is purposefully seeking to obtain a contract and/or working relationship with that customer by making such claims, Therefore these claims are clearly part of the contract between the two parties. In my opinion many of the spreadbet companies appear to disregard these points. IG Index most certainly do !

In order to defend themselves against customers claims of having hit a price on screen but not being filled at that price, most spreadbet companies will simply suggest that you read the T&C. In my experience most of the T&C are not quite as the spreadbet personnel suggest they are. It is well worth reading them through several times in order that You fully understand how both parties are protected. Of course even when you present your case to a Compliance Department it is quite likely that will reject it on the grounds that they don’t agree with your particular interpretation. In my recent case with IG they claim that there are other terms not actually listed in the T&C which allow them not to fulfil the contractual obligation which the T&C suggests they have. This type of response can’t of course be argued with the spreadbet company and they know this. The only course of action is one of third party involvement which of course means extra cost, extra time and extra stress (and that presumes that you can find a third party who is familiar with the finite details and problems which occur in the world of spreadbetting and can hence adjudicate). The companies involved realise that in order for a customer to successfully challenge them that customer is going to have to take on a considerable amount. This is the reason they stone wall you, to gauge your reaction or non reaction.
It would appear that certain spreadbet companies realise that most people who deal with them aren’t actually aware of regulations and laws which protect consumers against, not only underhand practices, but also unfair contracts and T&C which the spreadbet companies weald over us. For example, we know of companies which allow us to submit orders and then decide to hold us for an unspecified period of time before deciding weather to except the deal or not. Of course, if the market moves in that time they can factor such movement into the final decision on weather to except of reject the instruction. If you telephoned the dealing desk of any spreadbet house and suggested that you could wait up to a minute before deciding weather to trade on quotes made via telephone they would laugh at you. With this in mind why should be allow spreadbet companies to do the flipside of that. Of course the spreadbet companies will again claim that the T&C allow them to do this but in my opinion such a claim would almost certainly be in breach of the Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts Regulations 1999 where Regulation 5 stipulates that:

“a contractual term which has not been individually negotiated shall be regarded as unfair if, contrary to the requirement of good faith, it causes a significant imbalance of the parties’ rights and obligations arising under the contract to the detriment of the consumer.”

Of course in our case we are expected to sign pre written Customer Agreements and therefore the terms have not been individually negotiated and therefore this Regulation would appear to be directly applicable to our situation. If we then take into account what I have previously written about spreadbet companies not allowing us one minute plus to consider quotes then is would be perfectly fair to say that there is a ‘significant imbalance of the parties rights’ which are, of course to the ‘detriment of the consumer’.

Do the spreadbet companies take any notice of these rules and regulations that are in force in this country ? Answer NO !

In my opinion they will soon have to. After my research I am convinced that the regulatory bodies which oversee spreadbetting are going to be forced to act as more and more stories arise.

Steve.
 
Steve you might want to have a look at the tacticaltrader website (if you haven't already done so) at the IG Index thread - there is a guy on there taking legal action against IG for dodgy practices. Might be worth comparing notes.
 
IG introduce hourly spreads

NEW! Hourly FTSE & Wall Street First ever hourly spreads on
stock indices! Take a short-term view with low spreads (FTSE: 2 points, Wall St: 4 points) and low deposits. Please note: there are no rollovers for hourly bets on indices - all bets expire at the level of the first print recorded by Bloomberg at the time quoted.
Click to expand...


These look good for trading the last hour of the US market...

All bets close at the top of the hour.. So if you open one at
say 15:40 it will close at 16:00, ofcourse you should still be
able to close the bet early if you want to.
 
sorry if this is obvious - but why do they 'look' good for final hour US trading ? Txs.
 
I had a Binary DOW SB deleted with IGIndex yesterday as soon as it went into £150 profit! I asked them to ring me, did i get a phone call - NO!

The expiry date for the SB was today so WHY was it deleted - Any ideas anyone?

I think the FSA need a call about this
 
Any chance that you post details about the bet. Having a binary deleted seems rather harsh purely on the basis that it is their own product and hence price it how they want. I am of course assuming that it was deleted due to a problem with the price at the time they let you open it.

Steve.
 
Binary bets are not FSA regulated not even on the main IG Index site.

Also BBs are based on an underlying price, if the underlying
price feed has an error the BB could be justifiably canceled,
if the error was due to a bug in the BB pricing algorithm then
that would be harder to justify.
 
kbharj,

I just read you review of IG,

I saw a dow UP Binary bet quoted at 0/3 so i bought it at three, it went up within seconds to 30 somthing and then the dealing interface closed and would not let me close the bet.
Click to expand...


That 0/3 quote was clearly erroneous, i noticed IG were
still quoting BB based on the previous close price ie down
150 odd points, no wonder the UP bet was quoted 0/3.

This was a clear mistake, you shouldnt hold it against IG.
They have thousands of markets to maintain they cant always
get the price right for each one.

Sure they should have phoned you back but you should
have realised that 0/3 was clearly wrong given that the
futures were only down like 25 points last night.

Note that i have alteast a half a dozen bets refused by IG in the
last six months, and once even had a closed bet re-opened,
and they didnt even tell me!! I could have shut shop after
the close confirmation and ended up with a big loss..
Count yourself lucky you got an email i didnt even get that.

However i take responsibility for my own trading and never
blame IG or anyone else.
 
Last edited:
A Binary Bet is a Spread Bet ! They take a binary event (either 0 or 1) and convert it into a spread bet situation (its correct term is an 'index'), in IG's case its between 0 and 100.

donaldduke - I'm shocked at what you say has gone on with your account at IG Index. That bet that you say was reopened is a shocker, how did they justify that ? You also say that you didnt even get an email, did they communicate the reopening to you in any way ? A dozen bets refused is also a large number, what kinds of bets were you doing ? Do you have any other details surrounding the refusals ? Do you realise that for IG to reserve the right to open/close bets at the advertsied level (in the client area) they have to fail your order under a clearly laid out criteria ? This is their obligation to you when they enter the Customer Agreement - That agreement clearly states that they will deal with orders in a particular manner - In the case I have against them they have clearly not dealt with my instruction to close my open bet in the stated manner. Having challenged them on the issue the legal department has written to me to advise me that there are other terms and conditions that are not listed and therefore it is these extra terms that allow them to reject my order at anytime they see fit. The compliance department have however advised me that these 'extra' terms do not exist but are still refusing to allow my bet to be closed at the correct price because the legal department has the last word. They are cheats and are not to be trusted in my opinion. I don't trade with them in any great size anymore because they insist that the T&C allow them to cheat at anytime.

Steve.
 
stevespray said:
I don't trade with them in any great size anymore because they insist that the T&C allow them to cheat at anytime.
Click to expand...

Steve, (my underline of your quote) why are you trading with them AT ALL given the above?
 
stevespray,

They screwed the price at their end i took it and closed the
bet knowing it was wrong, however i did think the fact
that they didnt contact me was a bit dodgy.

They should have used the correct price at the time but they
prefered to reopen the bet?!?

The times i have been refused a bet however the prices
have nearly always been good as far i as i can tell.


These things dont bother me, i can deal with the bookies
and the games they play, but my own psycologhy is much harder
to deal with!!!

What i am saying is that i will lose alot more via my own actions
than i will ever lose because the bookies have made a mistake
or refused a perfectly good bet.
 
Last edited:
A Binary Bet is a Spread Bet ! They take a binary event (either 0 or 1) and convert it into a spread bet situation (its correct term is an 'index'), in IG's case its between 0 and 100.
Click to expand...

Binary Bets are fixed odds bets.

Like if you buy a BB at 10 thats like doing a 10-1 fixed odd bet
with a normal bookie.

The FSA is not interested in fixed odd bets according the
IG index website.
 
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I had an account with IG some time ago (closed now); I was watching their Dow price one evening as the market was falling – IG’s price was about 8-10 points below the cash – clearly quite an outrageous bias..!

I phoned IG to ask them about it; their ‘dealer’ (?) gave a surly reply:- “perhaps there are a lot of sellers about mate, and anyway it’s our price – orlright mate….?”

And their account charges on CFD’s are ridiculous…….

If enough punters ‘vote with their feet’ perhaps they’ll get the message……!
 
Tony - I still find them useful. At present I am testing an options strategy using smaller stakes than are possible in the main market.

Donaldduke - I am sure you will find that its an index bet just like any other instrument they offer. They convert all prices to an index be it futures , cash, options and in this case binaries. You can claim its fixed odds but is it ? With binaries you have the option to trade in and out of it until expriy, try doing that down the bookie when your nag goes over at the first !

Tradesmart - This is the point I have made for ages about the spreadbetting firms (as I have mentioned on another thread) how does a customer know when they are "varying their market from the underlying" and how do we know when the price is "wrong". If you would have taken that price you mentioned and gone long they could have cancelled the bet on the basis that the bet was opened at the wrong price (if the market would ahve gone back up of course).

Steve.
 
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