Online Spread betting: IG Index vs Cantor vs Financial Spreads

hjk

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Just a small warning to those who spread trade online.

I used to trade fairly actively with IG Index, Cantor Index and Financial Spreads, but there is a subtle but sometimes very crucial difference when trading online with Cantors that is not a problem with the other two. (I do not know about City Index)

With IG or FS their so-called 'live prices' are a very good indicator of the market they are making but if you actually want to trade you in effect send a request for their 'real live price' for the amount you want to trade. They give you a price, which is very rarely more than a tick or two away from the original displayed 'live price', and you are given ten seconds or so to decide whether you want to execute a buy/sell at that price. Even within that 10 seconds they are at liberty, and have often done so in my experience, to pull the price and re-state it.

Now with Cantors similarly their displayed prices are supposed to be 'live'. So you put the order in to buy/sell at so many £ per tick at the displayed price. When everything is running smoothly the confirmation that it is done comes back within 10 secs. But for what ever reason (the market is moving rapidly, your/their systems are playing up, dodgy internet connection etc) that confirmation can take much longer, occasionally it might never arrive so you are forced to ring them up. And most crucially they can DK that order at their discretion (as they did several times to me). In effect they give themselves a free option for as long as they like (in practice a few minutes, the time it takes you to ring up and complain) whether to fill you or not, and it's strange how they never give you the fill when the market has subsequently moved in you favour! Even when running smoothly they have that 10 sec option whilst you are left hanging. IG and FS can pull their price in that 10 secs, you cannot with Cantor.

Any other pros/cons between the SB companies?
 
Yep - same with CMC. When over $1 in profit on AHC I went to close. Was offered a price for less than 2 secs - too short to accept - and then price withdrawn and replaced after a 45 sec wait with price $0.65 higher. Be v.v. careful with SB's.
 
Hi Roger.

The problem with AHC at the moment is it is moving like lightening, and jumping all over the place on low volume, so the price is moving a lot faster than CMC, so you get some very poor fills.

At least I now know why AHC has fallen like a stone. It's Roger shorting it :)

Hi Hjk
Welcome to T2W :)

Any other pros/cons between the SB companies?
The main problems are the ones that you and Roger have already mentioned. I would suggest that if anyone is going to spreadbet then the poor fills and slippage must be worked into any risk calculation.

HTH
 
Thanks for the welcome 'FTSE Beater'.
All my online problems were on the FTSE Future for max. £50/tick(so should be no liquidity problems) and more specifically with the way that Cantors online system is set up. I have no problem with them changing their price, as long as they maintain the same bid/offer spread. I do object to Cantors giving themselves a free option with no get-out for the customer! :mad:

Great site so-far! :)
 
hi to all just joined.
i've been dealing with cityindex and though they are very good i seem to have a lot of problems with their site, it always happens when i put a trade on,i wait for confirmation and then get an error saying that there seem to be a problem with the server i know its not my end because i can still access the internet and and i have live feed and thats fine. but its still annoying because i don't know if i have been filled or worse when i'm getting out of a trade it often happens and i have to rush to the phone to see if its gone through.
one time i put a buy on the ftse future went up 30points then put in a sell but the sell was not confirmed on my screen phoned them and they said no sell confirmation so i asked them to close my position by that time the ftse had eaten 12 points of my profit
very annoying. though in fairness it only happened once in the last 3mth

regards

andycan
 
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