IG Index

If you do not day trade do you use the current month or 2/3 months hence. These + day trading are the only options I have seen offered by spread betting companies.

Regards

bracke
 
At the moment I use march.

This week - I gained/lost the following points
lost 27 points on boots
gained 67 points on Nasdaq
gained 2 points on dow - yes 2 points - well I was going out and didn't want to leave the position open.
 
I assume you use a far month to allow for a widish/unexpected variation in the market you are betting on. I do not know what level of stop loss you use but unless it is quite large, do you not get stopped out anyway and might as well use the daily spread which is tighter

Regards

bracke
 
I usually use 2*atr (Average true range) and I base how much I bet per point on the volatility of the stock or indices. e.g if something has an ATR of 60, I could bet say £2, where as if it had an ATR of 10 I would bet £12 per point. I find this way the move will roughly be equal in a £ basis and helps reduce my risk.

I either trail my stoploss using 2*atr at an end of day close basis, or I look for a breakout in the opposie direction.

I use a far month in case I hit a decent trend, If I do then a few points extra on the spread doesnt make much difference. Also spreads are pretty good on CapitalSpreads, It doesnt work as well on IGIndex.

I only day trade the Dow, so only buy dailys when trading it.
 
I think I understand your answers. Basically the wider the atr the less you risk

Does not using 2* atr end of day close as your stop loss level give you a large stoploss figure when the market is running high eg the dow over the past 20 days?

What are the range averages you use?
day high to day low
yesterdays close to today high
yesterdays close to today low

Regards

bracke
 
bracke said:
I think I understand your answers. Basically the wider the atr the less you risk

Thats it. Works for me anyway.

bracke said:
Does not using 2* atr end of day close as your stop loss level give you a large stoploss figure when the market is running high eg the dow over the past 20 days?
[/B]

Dont use it on the dow, I only day trade the dow, so not much point in setting a stop at 2*atr. I only trade dow maybe once or twice a week at the most.

bracke said:
What are the range averages you use?
day high to day low
yesterdays close to today high
yesterdays close to today low
[/B]

In excel the formula would be =max(H-L,PDC-L,H-PDC). I then take the average of this over the previous 20 days.

H=High
L=Low
PDC=Previous days close

-------------

The reason why I do this is because it works for me at the moment, on shares anyway.

For example Brit airways was at 232 the other day and I went long. The atr was 7.5 (28atr=15) so I set a stop at 217. It then proceeded to drop over the next few days on next of terrorist threats, but because it didnt hit my stop I kept if open even though I was doubting my decision. It is now at 292, which is a 60 point gain.
 
So before you make a trade on a share or indices you have to input the necessary data to excel in order to calculate the atr, or do you get the data from somewhere else

I'm a little confused by the formula, are the commas and minus sign in the correct place, if they are I would appreciate a more basic description.

Do you use the atr to decide when to close the trade?

Regards

bracke
 
Basically the , are the seperators between 3 options
1) High - Low
2) PDC-LOW
3)High-PDC

the highest option is the result excel gives and is the true range.

I sometime input it manually and still do when looking for breakouts. But a lot of charting packages have atr as an option. so I would select ATR on a daily chart over 20 periods.

Sometimes I trail 2*atr as a stop loss other times I just look for a breakout in the opposite direction. It depends on why I entered the position in the first place I guess.
 
Please excuse my continuing questioning

1 Are the High and the Low that you use taken from the current
day?

2 Why do you input manually if you have a charting package?

3 Do you use the sysem for Indices if not why not?

Regards

bracke
 
1. Yes
2. Because I havent worked out how to use all the features of the charting package yet :)
3. I use it for Nasdaq 100, but not for Dow or FTSE.
 
I don't use it for the Dow because it doesnt work so well and I have a habit of losing money on FTSE because Im always convinced it is going to go down (So I trade the FTSE rarely)
 
AA99

Many thanks for answering my questions it is much appreciated

Regards

bracke
 
No problem.

It works for me, I find I need to define my exits pretty well before I make a trade. If I dont I often make mistakes and close the position for either a small loss or a small profit on a big trend.

If you are going to try anything like this it is well worth backtesting to see what kind of results you would have got in the past.
 
On the subject of T & C they are a contractual obligation..if you are truly pissed at the way they are misinterpreted you also have the option of small claims which from my experience will be quicker than an omsbudsman...the little guy will also get the edge on any arbitrary , or subjective points..at last time of looking court/application fees ran circa £40-£150 with a claim limit of £5k..simple to do
Cheers
 
Evening Steve, Thanks for taking the time to post on the original subject of the thread. It did start to get alittle of subject there, not that I mind of course, exchange of information is king imho, I really like sites like these.

Yes, I looked into the Small Claims Court situation but a friend who is a bit of a legal eagle has suggested that the FSA and Ombudsman should be very interested in what has gone on as spreadbetting is still really an expanding new business. The only way the FSA are going to really learn the problems that the 'grass roots' users have to put up with is if the punters inform them of situations that have cropped up and then not been dealt with correctly.

I do plan to take IG to court to recover the monies they have cheated from me. However, a positive outcome from the enquires made by the FSA / Ombudsman could almost leave the court case as a formality if they indicate that my complaint is fully justified.
So the advice that I have had from my friend is basically to prepare the case notes carefully and not to hurry things jut to "get my day in court". It is infact sound advice which one hopes will result in a satisfactory outcome. It would be good however if it did go to a hearing and I could directly question IG's legal representative on his rather peculiar interpretations of the T&C - I'm fairly sure from reading the last few letters that IG have sent me that the guy in question would be tied up in knots !

The outcome of the case does, of course, have wider ramifications for IG Index. If I am successful then IG will have to offer the service they advertise and start processing orders in the manner laid out in the T&C. In essence that is, in my opinion, the reason why IG couldnt find in my favour on this issue when I first contacted compliance. I think they knew that they couldnt allow a customer to complain that an order hadnt been excepted. You see, over a period of time it would seem that dealers have become conditioned to tell customers that according to the T&C they have no right to expect orders filled at quoted prices. This is obviously untrue and the T&C show that for an instruction to be declined the order has to be invalid at the time it is placed.
If IG would have excepted my complaint and upheld it then it would have also been obvious to them that I would tell others about my successful challenge. This then presents obvious problems for them - ie other people starting to challenge them too.

In the end I hope the outcome of the case will be of benifit to all. The financial authorities need to take a close look into the world of spreadbetting and make some hard and fast rules which all companies should have to adhere to. There are two many companies about that what to have it both ways or operate their platforms in such a way as to extract a big edge (as well as a big spread).

Have a good weekend,
Steve.
 
Last edited:
Stevespray,
You have had good advice,I wish you luck and admire your peseverance.

Cheers
Steve
 
Good luck steve, hope you succeed.

Most spreadbetting companies are as bad as each other, but this is because they are only after one thing, and that is profit.

It takes a lot of skill and good judgement to be successful.
 
Hi Guys and Gals. First time post and very worrying IG thread. I use City Index and scalp regularly all day. Whilst agreeing about the spreads I keep the order window open when nearly ready to deal which updates once a second and have never had a problem even with large bets. One day when my computer froze and I missed a price they even gave me that price on the phone after the market had moved away from me. And no I dont work for City Index I just trade from home, sometimes winning but it seems moreoften losing.
 
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