I would appreciate if you could be more exact. You see so far I have not seen any signs of things that you are writing about. For example: after every trade I get trade confirmation emailed to me immediately with opening price and size. The spot forex quotes have never been any different from Reuters quotes. Oil, oil options, gold, indices all are quoted from the exchanges (I have checked). So as I said please be more exact.
I spreadbet forex - but I am an EOD trader, so if the quote is out by a few pips it doesn't make much difference as I am looking for tens if not hundreds of pips profit per trade. I dont think the way the likes of IG massage their quotes is suited to scalpers. If the price is moving up or down, IG will move their quotes a few pips ahead of the current direction. However I am profitable (although I received a nasty drawdown this week) and have never had problems with IG or Capital Spreads closing positions for many thousands of pounds profit.
For the most part I agree. Although IGIndex is a spread betting company, their prices rarely deviate significantly from the broader market. I used to trade news on IG and in only one instance (uk trade balance sometime q4 2004) did their prices spike. All it required was a phone call and they put my position back into market. However, if you do regularly profit with substantial size with IG they will put you on manual execution and that's when they start to play games.