Two of my positions were stopped out earlier. I had placed these stops out of harms way so I was rather surprised. Normally I would just chalked it up to the usual market fun and games and accepted the loss, however on checking the underlying market from a different source, I noticed that the market had not actually gone anywhere near where the Finspreads quote had gone. I checked another source which confirmed that I should not have been stopped out. Of course I got on the phone and they had no explanation and put me back in. I'm beggining to wonder how many times they have done this to me in the past. I am going to have to check every stopout against the market from now on. To add insult to injury, their charts have been down a lot lately and get this, after 5.30pm GMT they think it's completely acceptable to triple their spread on the FTSE rolling contract! They sound exactly like the 'bucket shop' scam described in Reminiscences of a Stock Operator about the life of Jesse Livermore.
Better watching these low lifers!! I pulled out my account with IG Index for being naught and refusing to close my position via the platform!!...had to phone them, by the timei got through, position moved against me!! .....if your watching/day trading....no need for stop losses. .........short the hell out of the market, you'll make loads of money back. This bubble is ready for the BANG!
Hey Elsworth, can you recommend any honest spreadbetting firms? From what I hear and experienced Finspreads is one of the more shady and dishonest outfits. Yep, waiting for the big bang, waiting for confirmation first though.
In my experience, I deal with both IG and Capital, when they track a future (which are regulated) their spread even if gets wider can not go far away from the future's quotes. Widening spread after hours is normal, @ Capital FX goes from 2 pips to 7, adjust your stops. But FX is a different matter as far as correct quotes are concerned, you should not have such problems if trading futures, ie if S&P500's (ES) low overnight's been 1400 and their spread is say 8 for overnight and assuming you are long, the lowest reasonable low they can take it down to is 1399.20. Keeping that in mind I would adjust stops for swing trades. If in the above example they were to quote below 1399 I would raise it with them and if no settlement, then I would just sue the SOBs.
I don't understand, why people trade through spreadbetting firms? Why not use a good real broker which does not play against the trader and trade real instruments? Maybe there are some hidden advantages of spreadbetting I don't know about?
Winnings are not taxable to UK residents, huge advantage. Also, if one understands that SBs are not really for scalping they should be OK, all reputable firms are regulated.
They spammed me with a link to this book: http://books.global-investor.com/books/25792.htm?ginPtrCode=21900
Romik, I agree with that. If you trade medium or long term and mark your stops against the Market and NOT against finspreads quote then you should be ok. Interestingly, if you chose to mark your stop against market and not finspreads own quote, they whack the margin on the trade way up. Nice incentive for the inexperienced to use finspread quote, max out their margin then be easily picked off with those mysterious finspread quote spikes.
DrEvil...can't recommend a SB firm, as i don't sb. Transferred the funds recently to eTrade for trading CFD's. They are an excellent outfit, pretty honest....and above all, let you trade the market with REALTIME prices!!.... Since my move this year to them, i have a positive balance, above what i deposited and trading charges are cheapest i've seen anywhere....£9.95 per trade! Good luck