I don't agree, The SB company cannot have it all, when it comes to deciding, execution or not. The input you made and what they receive by you clicking on the quote, should be followed through. That is, if that input match the real market price (their wrap deducted) at that very instant, this whether the market is volatile or not. The SB industry is quickly changing and one will be amazed where it stand in a few years from now.
I have found this thread very educational, and am coming to understand why SB companies have some legitimate reasons for not giving the exact price that one clicks on, when the market is moving fast. I think Capitalspreads are a good firm in many respects, and the fact that Simon contributes regualry to this forum in what is obviously an open, reasonable and honest manner reassures me a lot.
The problem then with CS becomes the slow speed of their fills, but relative to other SB companies - not to some other sort of beast altogether. Some people on this thread recommend trading certain sorts of trades - e.g. after news announcements - elsewhere, if at all. But this ignores the fact that some of us - e.g. me - are not in any position to do that, whereas SB allows easy entry with no set up cost and a minimal outlay of capital. Different strokes for different folks....For me at present it is SB or nothing, simple as that. I can learn trading without risking so much....
So my comparison is between speed of CS fills - slooow - and Worldspreads - faster, but you may get requoted several points away from your original click at fast periods - and IG, who are quickest, though I have rarely traded the news with them so do not know what they are like at busy periods.
I was interested to read Simon say re slow speeds; "On our platform we make no favorites everyone gets filled as soon as we are able to do so. But it is difficult as we have to check each and every one before actioning around data releases which tends to slow up fills. If you know you should have ben filled you can trade in the knowledge that you will eventually have the order actioned (but you may not know the exact fill price) so can trade to close a position which is not yet open ! "
Sounds great in theory, but does not take account of the "price no longer valid" message. I have also had several trades which have not gone through and got the message "an unexpected error has occurred". So there is no way that I am going to try to close a trade until it has definitely gone through. So it needs to go through faster, which other SB firms can manage. IG may be bigger, but WS is presumably not, so CS should be able at least to manage their speeds?
Also in the real world - at least in my real world - not everyone has the latest super-duper computer. In CS, I need a trading window open, another for open positions, and ideally a third for the order book where I can alter stops, particularly as there are no trailing stops. I also need at least a couple of charts, and I like to have another company's price feed open too. Oh and I might like to actually look at a non-trading webpage, or the news.....All these windows need to be resized to fit together on the desktop.
So (at risk of going in to another topic) every so often my browser's memory cache fills and its speed slows down (I have increased size of memory cache in Firefox and K-Meleon but still need to close browser and restart every so often). Browsers crash occasionally too. After restart of browser it takes a while to get all windows open again - during which time prices that were standing still may suddently have moved. Plus SB firms' own websites go down occasionally, as do all computers.
So - there is enough other tech junk getting in the way of efficient trading, taking up time, and causing stress, without having very slow fills as well! As well as fast fills, the other thing I think it is legitimate to expect from an SB company is a well-designed platform where one has do the minimum of button-presses and switching between windows in order to trade. I am not saying CS are particularly bad here, but they are certaily not cutting edge.
IG has a new one-click facility, but I have not used it yet - unlike their normal deal ticket, you cannot set a stop in advance of the trade, which means the margin is not reduced drastically to fit the size of a tight stop. It has to be agreed that CS are great re margin levels.
I had a demo of GFT's dealbook 360 - some excellent features on the platform, both on the web-based platform and the software-based one. But as they wanted £1250 mimimum to open an account, I did not pursue it.
this seems the wrong way round to me. You software is programmed to do this? or is it left to the dealers to finally get around to pressing the button eventually. I had a very late fill on a standing order only once. I guess I should consider myself lucky
