Best Thread Capital Spreads

[paulb]

gle

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

Absolutely agree with this approach. Ease of use is what matters most. One of the several reasons I did not stay very long with Finspreads was that their platform required me to use a particular screen resolution which I did not want to use. Instead of making their platform user -friendly, e.g. by providing scroll bars so that customers using a different screen resolution could move about the page, their approach in e-mail correspondence was along the lines of "most users use this particular screen resolution that we have designed for", implying that I should too!.

 

[gle101]

Absolutely agree with this approach. Ease of use is what matters most. One of the several reasons I did not stay very long with Finspreads was that their platform required me to use a particular screen resolution which I did not want to use. Instead of making their platform user -friendly, e.g. by providing scroll bars so that customers using a different screen resolution could move about the page, their approach in e-mail correspondence was along the lines of "most users use this particular screen resolution that we have designed for", implying that I should too!.

Yes this is alright, but what I am asking for, is for CS to deliver, from a trader's point of view, a few fundamentally basic platform facilities, not a fancy website.

 

[Jbat001]

Hi Simon

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

Eh? Missed that one! What was that about (and don't say 'spreadbetting'!).

 

[Chocolate]

I'm pleased that your planning on reducing your overnight spreads but I'm starting to get a bit concerned about the amount your prices drift beyond the underlying market. For example, yesterday EUR/JPY had a high of 158.96, while your bid price has a high of 159.07, ask would then be 159.11. It's not such a great advantage having tight spreads for people trading in the intermediate term if your prices drift beyond extremes - it makes an effective spread 15 for those not scalping. Of course if anyone happened to be scalping at the time this happened they could have got a very decent price for a few seconds at least no doubt.

[edit: I just realised your High might actually be the high of the ask so this is only about 8 pips higher than where it should have been.]

This particular move did not affect me, but I was stopped out in another trade today which by rights should never have got closer than a couple of pips away, so it is a concern... I intend to phone you about it tomorrow morning and I must say, on the plus side, that you are almost always very reasonable in these situations (in my experience) so it would take this kind of thing happening a few times and things going against me for me to actually look for a change of service.

 

[capitalspreads]

am away this week so will comment on all these threads later but the one i will mention is chocolate´s as my dealers were worrying about it themselves!! and rang me on the golf course!

the reason is that on CS we are trading ´today´ not spot. Spot for those of you who dont know is two days forward which is the usual settlement in FX trading. So you get charged for the weekend at the weekend with CS not on wed/thurs night which is the norm in FX trading. Yesterday the spot markets were taking into account the four day weekend. Whilst CS were still quoting without it. Yen/euro rate differentials make a hefty difference over four days.

We are in the process of changing this as our hedging volumes are now so large that we cannot afford the carry costs of being the `wrong way round´ on a wed/thurs night rollover. Clients will be informed when the change happens.

Simon

 

[Chocolate]

When carry trades are settled is all very confusing...lol

The trade I got stopped out on it turned out it was to do with the underlying futures, so I guess I was just unlucky this time, and no problem at your end. It was slightly frustrating though as the price continued on up the following day, but you win some you lose some :|

 

[capitalspreads]

j trader

the further my hairline receeds the more i look like a "senior market commentator" and the more in demand i become. I suppose there must be some advantages to getting older!

Cant remember what i was talking about (probably rubbish as per normal).

Crawsthorne

when we talk of auto trading we mean that clients trades are just automatically accepted not that there is an auto connect between charting and trade creation. Our charts are provided by a company called IT Finance. The charts effectively come from our prices but do not show every single print (although nearly all of them) as in times of stress there volume of data can become somewhat congested and are provided for information purposes. For absolute highs and lows (if there are disputes) we analyse the various exchange data, and what we are pricing it from etc, to determine exact pricing levels.

simon

 

[splitcap]

Simon
Sooner or later someone is going to allow the offsetting of deposit balances before calculating the overnight financing charge.
I realise there are numerous reasons why you wouldn't want to do this, but you could limit it to balances of >£10,000 or have a minimum time limit. More radical still, charge a one off fee per transaction.
As a medium term investor with no mortgage it's just not worth getting involved otherwise.

You could be the first mover!

 

[capitalspreads]

splitcap

umm well yes maybe somebody will, but the margins we require against positions is in reality very small. The gearing we allow our clients is not the gearing we are allowed with our clearers so whilst you get nothing on your deposits they are in reality small compared to the deposits normally required for running these size of positions.

A client with a quarterly contract in an equity would be wise to have at least 5% margin on deposit and I feel that the loss of income on just 5% does not even vaguely compare with the loss of income on 100% if you actually bought the shares outright. Fair enough the quarterly contract does have a cost of carry rate but this does no impact if the shares move in your favour in the short term, in reality you still have a very large footprint for a very small sum of money.

At the end of the day CS is a bookmaker (regulated by the FSA of course but still a bookie) you would hardly expect Betfair or Ladbrookes to pay you interest on money held with them. If we started paying interest then we would have to deduct tax etc etc and report to the inland revenue etc etc. The cost of monitoring this would just not be worth it. As I have said in the past on this thread "if you want interest on your money, keep it in a bank".

Cheers

simon

 

[Jbat001]

Did anyone catch the snippet from the Grand National about the chap who went went long against 16 or more horses finishing the race at 20,000 pounds a point with Sporting Index? At the end of the race, only 13 came in.......that's gonna hurt!

 

[capitalspreads]

mind you, spare a small thought for the guy running the book at sporting... with no ability to hedge can you imagine the interview with his boss this morning if 20 or more had come in.

Simon

 

[ceydababy]

Simon,

Just a quick note to say keep up the good work. I am really liking the 1 point FTSE spread, in fact I started trading the FTSE off the back of the 1 point spread. Are you planning on keeping this offer running for a while ?

I would also point out to the sceptics on this thread, that I never have a problem getting filled at the prices I want either, so the 1 point spread really is a 1 point spread.

Obviously it would be great if all the spreads were 1 point, but realistically that isn't going to happen. You want to make money right ?? Your spreads seem very tight compared to your competitors. However, I wouldn't mind some more technical studies available on the charts ! CMC use the same chart company as you guys and there charting seems a little more advanced.

No problem with you guys making all the money in the world as long as your service levels don't drop to facilitate profit growth. Your service is pretty much spot on, so no complaints from me.

I think the platform has become more stable over the past 6 months, I did used to get a lot of problems getting filled, charts would go down and then you would switch to phones only....haven't had this happen to me for ages !!!. Top Marks

Anyways, just a bit of feeback from a satisfied customer.

Keep up the good work

Mark

 

[capitalspreads]

ceydababy

the 1 point ftse looks like being a permanent feature... of course you can never say never but for the foreseeable future it will remain. We are looking at other spreads and will probably make decisions later in the year.

thanks for the other comments by the way.

we are in discussions about charting and other technicals but it must be admitted that some of our competitors are about 10 or 15 times bigger than us and have resources that i can only dream of (nice adverts on bloomberg etc) ..sigh.. one day. Nothing to stop you using their charts and trading on our platform though (he says hopefully)!!!

cheers

Simon

 

[Jbat001]

Just a quick ask - Simon, would you consider adding MDAX to your offering of european indices on the platform at all?

 

[capitalspreads]

jbat

will look into it

simon

 

[Jbat001]

jbat

will look into it

simon

Thanks - would be good to have a play with that one

 

[alf25]

Charts

Hi Simon i would like to ask you if there will be some improvements in charting tool?

and 1 question to the today chart od FTSE rolling daily yesterdays data are ending at 19:55 all other days 20:55. one hour disappear at 8.5.2007

 

[nigelpm]

Direct Access Spreadbetting

Simon,

Have you thought at all about allowing customers to trade on the level 2 book for UK equities - placing orders on SETS?

It is something no other SB providers offer (possibly for good reason) but wondered if it is something you could offer.

Now that CMC have increased their spreads it might be a chance to take away some customers.

 

[Kyoto]

DMA Spreadbet

Simon,

Have you thought at all about allowing customers to trade on the level 2 book for UK equities - placing orders on SETS?

It is something no other SB providers offer (possibly for good reason) but wondered if it is something you could offer.

Nigel, actually iDealing have direct access spreadbetting but they don't go out of their way to advertise it. I heard some providers in Gibraltar might be trialling the idea a while back but I haven't seen anything concrete.

 

[tornhill]

binary bets

hi simon,

i`m doing binaries from time to time with cs, would it be possible to display the opening level of the bet, maybe in the bet-info? i feel sometimes a little uncertain with only the displayed net change. another impression i have is that the net change itself should be updated faster.
maybe you could also extend your offerings of binary bets and the trading hours a little, hourly forex bets for example, until 20:00.

anyway, i like your simple and solid platform, it runs well on my macs.