Best Thread Capital Spreads

[capitalspreads]

gerald

hmmmm

no not at the moment, but it is a good idea. I will have a word with development. There may be an unforeseen consequence which makes it un feasable.

Simon

 

[Hoggums]

gerald

hmmmm

no not at the moment, but it is a good idea. I will have a word with development. There may be an unforeseen consequence which makes it un feasable.

Simon

Yes that is a very good idea - but I think it should be expanded for all orders - not just on open trades. Very often I just want to open a position at your open regardless of the level, it would be nice to say execute this order at 7:05am and not stick in some artificial level in the order which may or may not be hit.

You'd have to think about the interface carefully on that though as it could easily get confusing particularly with OCO orders.

 

[clin]

capitalspreads,

are you from london capital group offering the same spreadbetting services on etrades website?

lin

 

[gullible]

jbat

oddly enough our biggest winners are the buy and hold clients. Funding costs on quarterly markets are just 0.5% over/under Libor which when you add the tiny margin requirements (just 3% margin on FTSE 100 and 5% on FTSE 250) make buying/selling and holding via a SB firm rather an attractive proposition (if you get it right, of course).

Simon

Simon,

Interesting that buy and hold clients win big in spreadbetting- useful information thanks for that.
Buy and hold in indices, equities or FX? all la three?

 

[Visaria]

i suspect he means those who trade in somewhat longer time frames than scalpers do.

 

[Jbat001]

Simon,

Interesting that buy and hold clients win big in spreadbetting- useful information thanks for that.
Buy and hold in indices, equities or FX? all la three?

I guess over the looong term, and if your account is big enough, a 'buy' bet on any share index will make decent money.

Having the patience to hang around long enough, and the capital to do so is the key!

 

[capitalspreads]

gullible etc

what I meant was clients who, when they are right, hold onto positions (whilst judiciously moving stops) and dont take profits quickly. It does not matter which instrument you are talking about.

I focused on equity markets because unlike all the other markets our clients are hardly ever short of stocks (something psycological i expect). The effect has been that in individual stocks over the past three and a half years of CS's existance clients have done very well indeed on the equity front. As, of course, the market has just gone in one direction (with the odd fall out).

On the other hand we have also had clients who were long of the FTSE index for years..rolling into the next futures contract on each expiry. ..

the art is to back your winning bets and get out of your losers...and before someone says it , i know, it is much, much, easier to say than to do.... my biggest piece of advice is more along the lines of " do not fall in love with your positions, because they sure as h**l dont love you"

Simon

 

[Windowsill]

gullible etc

what I meant was clients who, when they are right, hold onto positions (whilst judiciously moving stops) and dont take profits quickly. It does not matter which instrument you are talking about.

I focused on equity markets because unlike all the other markets our clients are hardly ever short of stocks (something psycological i expect). The effect has been that in individual stocks over the past three and a half years of CS's existance clients have done very well indeed on the equity front. As, of course, the market has just gone in one direction (with the odd fall out).

On the other hand we have also had clients who were long of the FTSE index for years..rolling into the next futures contract on each expiry. ..

the art is to back your winning bets and get out of your losers...and before someone says it , i know, it is much, much, easier to say than to do.... my biggest piece of advice is more along the lines of " do not fall in love with your positions, because they sure as h**l dont love you"

Simon

Thanks for that Simon...... However.....my life would be perfectly complete if rolling positions could be chosen to automatically close at EOD. 24 hour Currencies could close at Midnight...that would suit me as well!!

Its an excellent idea.

Please!

 

[Chocolate]

Any chance of reducing your overnight spreads to something more tradeable, like 4 pips instead of 6, and 3 pips for AUD/USD and EUR/USD?

 

[capitalspreads]

chocolate

we will be doing this very soon. probably starting the week after easter.

Simon

 

[karmit]

CapitalSpreads website tanking up big time today?

 

[karmit]

not able to connect for the last 30min... has been intermittently down today


anybody else facing the same problem?

 

[capitalspreads]

karmit

between 15.23 and 15.53 the time of your half hour unobtainable problems we took 413 trades, a pretty normal amount for that time of the day.

I fear the problems may have been at your end or your link through to our hosting site. Please give our IT guys a ring they may be able to sort it.

Simon

 

[Chocolate]

chocolate

we will be doing this very soon. probably starting the week after easter.

Simon

super cool


I would trade sometimes with finspreads in the past but I can't access their new platform because it requires Java 8 or something advanced like that which I can't install, so I only use Capitalspreads these days and getting stopped out because of wide overnight spreads is not a happy prospect. It's kind-of a cliche - in a winning trade, 2 pips is no big deal but if 2 pips make the difference between winning and losing, down the line it could be the difference between (insert wild happy things) and (insert less happy state of affairs).

P.S. I heard something today about Gordon Brown putting up gaming tax in his budget, so does that affect you adversely or is that something separate? Though nothing to do with me I was just curious...

 

[capitalspreads]

chocolate

no they do not affect us. Financial Spread betting works on a different basis because we must hedge our risk in the real markets (which will of course not give us 15% tax back on profits!) So we cannot be expected to pay out 15% of client losses without some rebate on our hedging. Whereas the gaming companies when they wish to offset risk make a bet with another bookmaker, the loss/profit on these 'hedges' can be offset against clients wins/losses..So what the government does with SB comapnies is charge us 3% of all net client losses every month (if clients make a profit we cannot claim a rebate). And on a quarterly basis we also pay the normal 30% of all pretax profits as well.

So be assured that no matter how it all works the government takes back a sizable chunk of our revenue.

ce la vie

Simon

 

[gle101]

chocolate

no they do not affect us. Financial Spread betting works on a different basis because we must hedge our risk in the real markets (which will of course not give us 15% tax back on profits!) So we cannot be expected to pay out 15% of client losses without some rebate on our hedging. Whereas the gaming companies when they wish to offset risk make a bet with another bookmaker, the loss/profit on these 'hedges' can be offset against clients wins/losses..So what the government does with SB comapnies is charge us 3% of all net client losses every month (if clients make a profit we cannot claim a rebate). And on a quarterly basis we also pay the normal 30% of all pretax profits as well.

So be assured that no matter how it all works the government takes back a sizable chunk of our revenue.

ce la vie

Simon

Hi Simon,

But you do make a huge profit anyway, ha ha! Yes after going through your last years account I think it is about time for a "payback" to traders. No really, I was very impressed by CS annual growth, both turnaround and on the client base, not to forget the vastly increased profit. Isn't it about time to give back some of your profit to your traders in the form of a better deal on some of your products and also improvement on your platform?

 

[capitalspreads]

gle

ummm after all we are in business to make money not to lose it.

We are continually narrowing spreads and improving dealing response times. Just because we dont crow about it all the time does not mean that it does not happen. For instance our FTSE 250 spreads were halved to just 0.2%, FTSE 100 spreads are just 0.1% (half the spread of a major competitor currently making a big thing of the fact that they have cut to 0.1% EITHER SIDE), currency spreads were reduced throughout last year, numbers of markets increased dramatically ( we now offer many aim small cap stocks) we offer the FTSE at 1 pip, S&P at just 0.4, brent at 5 all good value when compared to companies making much greater profits than us.

Search functions were added, auto order filling and auto trading were added last year.

the speed and ease of navigation around our markets pages makes a mockery of the awkward nature of most of the competition. Just because it looks big and obvious does not mean that it is bad.

most important of all 60% of new accounts opened state that they came from 'recommendation' or 'word of mouth'. This would indicate that, in general, our clients feel that they are already getting a pretty good crack of the whip.

The reason our platform looks the way it does is because the vast majority of our clients prefer the simpler look. No doubt we will, in the future, make changes but they are unlikely to get far away from the current 'look and feel'. Wonderful highly professional looking platforms are all very well but they all require downloading of some form or another (some a great deal). Our system just sits directly on the web and as such is accessible to a huge number of people.

Simon

 

[gle101]

gle

ummm after all we are in business to make money not to lose it.

We are continually narrowing spreads and improving dealing response times. Just because we dont crow about it all the time does not mean that it does not happen. For instance our FTSE 250 spreads were halved to just 0.2%, FTSE 100 spreads are just 0.1% (half the spread of a major competitor currently making a big thing of the fact that they have cut to 0.1% EITHER SIDE), currency spreads were reduced throughout last year, numbers of markets increased dramatically ( we now offer many aim small cap stocks) we offer the FTSE at 1 pip, S&P at just 0.4, brent at 5 all good value when compared to companies making much greater profits than us.

Search functions were added, auto order filling and auto trading were added last year.

the speed and ease of navigation around our markets pages makes a mockery of the awkward nature of most of the competition. Just because it looks big and obvious does not mean that it is bad.

most important of all 60% of new accounts opened state that they came from 'recommendation' or 'word of mouth'. This would indicate that, in general, our clients feel that they are already getting a pretty good crack of the whip.

The reason our platform looks the way it does is because the vast majority of our clients prefer the simpler look. No doubt we will, in the future, make changes but they are unlikely to get far away from the current 'look and feel'. Wonderful highly professional looking platforms are all very well but they all require downloading of some form or another (some a great deal). Our system just sits directly on the web and as such is accessible to a huge number of people.

Simon

Simon,

The service and platform provided by Capitalspreads is liked and appreciated by many. There is no doubt about that, the company figures speak for themselves. I like the platform myself. However, with the kind of profit that you have, I as a trader, expect much more, especially with regard to spreads, dealers and platform issues.

To name a few things on the platform that could be improved.

1. Dealers window being timed out after 4 min..
2. Default adjustable stop loss on a client level, the default stop set by you is of no use.
3. Real instant execution (I agree, it has gotten better)

There are other things that I have been observing that could also be improved. I will get back to this board later on about these issues.

The good part still, in my opinion is, that CS is an overall good operation with a support department that is unmatched.

Have a nice weekend!

 

[Crawsthorne]

gle

Search functions were added, auto order filling and auto trading were added last year.

Simon

Simon

Please can you explain a bit more about about auto trading with you.

What charting is available, is it customizable, what is the most popular combination?

Thanks

Charles

 

[JTrader]

Hi Simon

saw you on BBC News 24 yesterday. You'll have your own TV show next!