Started trading with Capital Spreads

Bystander

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Hi All

Firstly, cards on the table: I work for a spreadbetting company.

Secondly: theme of this post. I noticed a few people discussing a new company, Capital Spreads, which was meant to take advantage of disatisfaction with deal4free et al in the short-term trading stakes. I joined up online, found them quick and efficient to get going, and started putting on some pretty random small trades just to see what their software was like.

The first point is that it is a pop-up based piece of software like FInancial spreads have, which means a quote window appearing. Slightly better is the fact that the price updates once popped up, and (probably because they have 4 users rather than FS's 4000), it is quick to load.

Secondly, the major drawback of Deal4Free, apart from the misleading name, is their known tendency for welshing on deals - waiting for a few seconds to confirm or deny the deal. So you place an order to buy at 11574, and a few seconds later it says "no you can't, how about 11576". Which means the effective spread is far worse. Now, CS were meant to do away with this. But they have not, at least for me. I have dealt about 25 times, and 4 times I was rejected on price. This is an incredibly high number of times, at 16%. Where I work, the rate is about from 800 completed forex deals (that do not fail credit), just 3 rejected. So price rejection has not gone away, unless they are picking on me only.

Thirdly, niggling errors. They stop you dealing on the Daily FTSE and stocks at 16.20. They stop dealing at 21.00 in the evening. And, possibly worse of all, they seem to use dealer intervention on all deals, so that they take 10-20 seconds to confirm, rather than the 3-5 seconds that you might expect from an automated system.

Finally, I thought their EURUSD price was meant to be 4 points wide, but now it seems to vary from 5 to 6.

I am posting all this as a spreadbetting customer, not a dealer. I user 5 or so accounts myself for various things. Each one promises to provide a revolution, but it never quite seems to happen. All that said, CS have some very nice software features, excellent account summaries, and so on, which I hope the other industry members copy. But revolution it is not.
 
Cheers for the "review". I have noticed that most people here seem to use deal4free. Why is that?
 
I have been using City Index's trading simulator and Capital Spreads trading simulator....

A few minutes ago, City was quoting 9706-9718 for Dec Wall St future, Capital Spreads (rather worryingly) was quoting 9768 - 9776 for the same contract

An arb opportunity if ever I saw one!


I think CS needs to look at their pricing!
 
I think you'll find that the prices on simulators are not watched with great diligence; only when money comes into it, do people care. LIkewise, when I traded on d4F's simulator, I miraculously found I could get firm quotes. Then, when I got going for real, it was all unfirm orders. Weird.
 
Bystander,

Can you say which spread bet company you work for?

I still see deal4free's spread on the Euro/USD is 4 points, not 5 or 6 like you state. Perhaps you are looking at it at a strange hour in the morning. They have had problems recently but in general I haven't had the kind of problems trading with them that you mention.

This looks like you are trying to steal deal4free customers. You should be able to do that by sticking to the facts.
 
I was writing about Capital Spreads, not Deal4Free. It is a review of capital spreads' dealing experience, as the title suggests. I know the EURUSD price at D4F is 4 pips, and my friends' experience there is that they tend to stick to it quite well.

I work for IG. Our EURUSD price is 5 pips wide, and it is not our way to reject £3 deals
 
Sorry, you were having a go at deal4free and I thought you were still going on about them.

At least we know who you work for. Now perhaps we can discuss the problems with the IG trading platform. But I haven't got the time to list them all at the moment :)
 
By all means go for it. The only way to improve is if you let us know. I don't think anyone seriously thinks their system is perfect. We will keep trying, but the only proof is in the tasting

I wasn't having a go, but repeating stuff I had learnt elsewhere.
 
Bystander

changing the subject a little......can u enter on a stop order with IG ?

if so is there a tolerance as to how far the stop has to be from current market quote ?

do u fill a stop order when 'your quote' hits the stop price, or when the underlying trades at the stop price (future bets) ??

hope u dont mind me asking

Jay
 
Blairlogie,
I think there is a problem with the capital spreads trading simulator, it seems to have frozen up at a fixed price unfortunately
 
I really never intended this to be a forum for IG, I was honestly here as a client. Then, why should anyone believe that?

Stops with IG. Unlike CMC and Capital Spreads, you can only place stops with IG against open positions you currently hold (see, I AM fair). You do that by right-clicking on the bet in the open position window, and selecting stops and limits. It can reduce your deposit required, as it does with Capital Spreads; a good feature.

The general rule is that the stop is triggered basis the middle of IG's quote being at or through the level of the quote. The "real market", where it actually exists, can be used as a reference point when clients wish to dispute the fill; however, there is often no real equivalent market to use (for example, Daily Wall Street iss not an exact equivalent to the Dow 30 Cash level at any one time). Dealers are usually happy to provide elucidation till the cows come home. Most dealers at ALL spreadbetting companies are scrupulously fair, because having endless rows with genuinely aggrieved clients is no fun and bad for business.

In most circumstances, there will be no distinction between the underlying futures hitting a stop level and the sb-quote doing the same, since most sb-prices are based quite closely on those futures.

Non-guaranteed stops, where there is potential for slippage, can get placed extremely close to the market. For example, 5 ticks for EURUSD. It varies by market, of course, and is more restrictive with stocks where liquidity problems are more prevalent.


hope this helps. I imagine it applies for most of the companies

Bystander
 
Hi
one of customers mentioned that we were being talked about. So I thought I would have a look.
Much of the critisism is fair , although we will in the future have straight through processing of trades , to start with in our first few weeks all trades are being checked to ensure that the system is not displaying incorrect prices.

I agree with the IG chap, most SB dealers hate having disagreements with clients and will usually do their best to be fair. The problem is that the word fair means different things depending on which side of the fence you are.

It is the same for the guys at d4f who seem to come in for the most flak. It is very difficult if you have 5 people hitting your price in say HSBC in a total of £200 a point and there is only 5000 on the offer, unless the trader is happy to expose the company to risk some of the punters are going to be unhappy. Especially as they could all see the 5000 shares and all think that they should be the ones to get them !

(But on the other hand everyone being nasty about d4f gives us more clients. So eerrr. dont stop)

Cheerio
 
Despite the problems with deal4free, they still have the smallest spreads and they offer stop and limit orders to enter trades and OCO (one cancels other) orders to enter or close trades online. I don't want to sound like an advert for them but it is hard to see how they can be beaten until other firms match their spreads and order options.
 
Bigbusiness you are right, that is why I have kept my Deal4Free account despite the misgivings.

It is still the best of the bunch!

JonnyT
 
Hi Big business
we match their order functionality, but d4f offer the tight spreads because they base thier systems on using the daily rolling scenario. In the long run you will lose trading on this basis but the cost is such a slight drip drip drip that most clients dont even notice it and only focus on the original price.

sorry bystander... hijacked your site for a second

Simon
 
Oh Boy ,

Mr Bystander , you are not a lucky guy are you ? why ? coz you ran into me and I will say this that I think IG are basically downright cheats with the worst dealing standards in the industry.

[Editor's note: Parts of this post have been removed as potentially libellous]
 
* but d4f offer the tight spreads because they base thier systems on using the daily rolling scenario. In the long run you will lose trading on this basis but the cost is such a slight drip drip drip *


I don't see how this happens . Also the daily rolling product is a good idea , it saves one from verbally rolling over - good idea.
 
Simon,

I day trade so deal4free still offer the best deal. They also offer next month bets with tight spreads. Sometimes if I feel like holding a short overnight, I am paid a small amount of interest. It only works against you if you hold the bet for a long time. But then I would use the monthly bet.

The competition is slowly catching up but none of the other companies seem to be able to match their spreads.
 
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