Best Thread Capital Spreads

[Spunkoid]

Frequent trading

CapitalSpreads,

Can your customer trade frequently online for example on Wall Street Cash as a small or medium volume player? Are there any limits on frequency?

I am not a scalper but to follow the main directions of the day I would be say going long, frequently adjusting size of that position and then say going short adjusting the size of that position. I may move from short to long or visa versa over five minutes or it may take hours to change from short to long or visa versa. I do not carry over night and I finish at or before the end of the close. I do not trade outside market hours.

Is any of this a problem?

Do you close down accounts that are consistently profit making?

Thanks in advance.

 

[capitalspreads]

yes I answered from home this morning but then moved it onto my more normal page as that would be more recognisable...

And you are right I removed the user friendly bit because when I came in this afternoon I walked straight into an arguement with a client who was irate that we had stopped him out on the initial move in the dow after this afternoon's numbers and seemed to think that we should have let him off because the market bounced even tho it went well through his level !!

it is not a change of policy it is just that some people will just try to use it as a reason to avoid any unfortunate stop level.

Just goes to show you cant win them all

simon

spunkoid

to be honest if you trade loads of times in something like the dow we are more likely to love you than stop you.

we have never closed a client down .

contrary to poular opinion we do have quite a few very good trading clients and we cultivate them. Why would we get rid of a client who gave us an angle on the market?

 

[LittleWhiteBull]

Simon

I have just sent the following email to CS Admin, perhaps you could consider it too:-

"Can you help explain:-

I have been trading your demo account for about a week now. It's been working very well and I have tried a number of different moves to test the system.

Today I went long on Giliead at 61.71. Price jumped around a bit through the evening and at around 9.15pm Bid sat at 61.25 for a few minutes. Suddenly Bid crashed to 25.91 (approx) and took out my stop at 55.31 without me even blinking. Next minute Bid was back up over 60. again! Meanwhile £3500 was taken off my account.

Is this genuine or a system error?

I can't believe that CS did this to take my account down, I have heard about this 'spiking' but I have also had CS quite highly recommended to me.

Help please."

I am not an irate customer yet as it may be an error - and it is not my money yet - obviously I reserve judgement.

 

[LittleWhiteBull]

Forgot to mention that the ask didn't drop to 25.91 unfortunately!!!

8.55am No reply from CS so rang them - unfortunately they don't seem to have an answer as yet although have been promised my account would be credited back and that I will get an email later today. Also been assured that this couldn't happen with a 'Live' account because there is Human Intervention when filling the order, whereas the Simulator is all automated.

Still not being judgemental until I have the full explanation via email which I have been promised.

I might be a quivering wreck by now if it had been my own money. Whilst I think I could deal with a loss like that if it had been my own fault (every loss should be viewed as a positive and a lesson learned from it), I don't think I could deal with a loss that had no explanation whatsoever for 12 hours (a very sleepless night I think).

 

[Skimbleshanks]

Demo accounts are never like the real accounts; I've tried quite a few and they are all the same.

The main reason is that all the technological expertise is concentrated on the live accounts to ensure they are operating at peak performance. My understanding is that demo accounts often have to run on separate servers just to make sure that no buy/sell signals are transmitted to the exchanges. This is certainly the case with the direct access brokers PFGBest and IB.

In other words, they are of low priority and tend to be shoved to the end of the maintenance/query queue. As so they should - after all, I would want to be reassured that any query I had on a live trade was not being shunted down the queue while a query on a demo account was being investigated.

So don't get too hung up about demo accounts - their main purpose is for you to get used to the trading platform before using on live trades.

In my experience demo accounts are light years away from the speed and top performance of the live accounts.

I can't, and don't, speak with knowledge about CapitalSpread's demo account.

 

[tradesmart]

Capitalspreads – I have been following your posts with interest recently, considering starting an account with your company on the basis of your apparently honest and helpful attitudes to spreadbetting questions

I am now a little alarmed by the fact that it has emerged you have also been posting under the alias of ‘drivethru’ in concealed and misleading support of Capitalspreads business interests (ie signing up punters)

Copying/deleting a post from ‘drivethru’ and pasting an edited version into a ‘Capitalspreads’ post yesterday, for the stated reason of “an argument with a client who was irate” is hardly transparent and smacks of business-motivated manipulation.

Whilst myself and I am sure many others, have appreciated your generally articulate replies and explanations; in view of the fact that you are undoubtedly using these boards as a sales pitch to gain business for your company, would it not be appropriate to maintain maximum transparency and integrity?

 

[LittleWhiteBull]

Thanks Skimbleshanks

I have now received the email response from CS which ties in with your comments:-

"Further to our conversation this morning regarding the incorrect stop level
hit on your Gilead trade last night, please accept our apologies for this
error. US shares usually cease trading at 9:00pm UK time and so I was
surprised that this market was still open and showing that stays open until
9:50. The last trade time for US shares should be 8:50pm. You may remember
that a few weeks ago the US put their clocks forward a week after we did,
which meant that everything traded an hour later. We had amended our
exchange hours to match this but unfortunately forgot to move them back.
With the market closed and our system trying to find a bid and an offer, I'm
afraid an erroneous price came through which triggered your stop.

Again, please accept our apologies for this. I have refunded the loss back
to your account (at the second time of asking!) and put the trade back in at
the original level. I can assure you that this would not have happened on
our live site as the trader on the late shift would know this trade should
not have happened.

Good luck with your trading.

Kind Regards
Marc"

This just brings to mind one more query which you may be able to answer for me Skim, is there ever much of a delay to get your order filled when trading live with Spread Betting companies? I have been impressed with the speed that an order if filled on the Demo but as it is all automated this is not surprising, I can imagine it could be quite different with a MM filling the order.

Certainly with the way Gilead was moving around yesterday I would have had difficulty catching it at a good price as it didn't stay there for more than a second or two (I also learned that this was not a trade I should have entered, so have lots more to learn).

 

[Skimbleshanks]

I can't speak about the speed of fill at CapitalSpreads because I have no knowledge or experience of it.

But I assume it will be similar to virtually every other SB company and direct access broker - the larger the order the slower the fill will be. A single contract for ES on a direct access broker will take around one second. However a 100 contract order will take five seconds, and sometimes 10-15 seconds or longer if the volume is thinner.

If you are trading £1 per point then I doubt whether there will be human intervention in the execution of your order. But if you were trading £200 per point, then there is likely to be a delay in getting a fill.

 

[grubs50]

hahaha, he shot himself in d foot by being too smart!!, I still think capitalspreads is good esp if u r just starting out with little capital and they have the best online trading platform .

 

[capitalspreads]

Tradesmart

I dont think that I have ever made any comments on this thread using my original Login of Drivethru. I was invited by the Trade2win guys to comment on this thread when it first appeared way back when. I am sure that if you ask them they will confirm this. Unfortunately my home computer still has my original user name as the automatic login which I forgot. whoops

I opened a new username so that users would be able to identify me as an interested party rather than as an anonymous commentator.

simon

but you are right I am feeling a bit red faced

 

[bottomdollar]

Hi guys
Just want to say that I've been impressed with Capital Spreads so far... customer service is great. The other day I tried to close a trade and it got stuck!! I saw my profits go from being positive to negative and more but I had a screenprint of my trade and called Capital Spreads.. they allowed me to close out my trade at the price when I tried to close.
My only comment is that I have noticed when the charts look bullish, the spreads are right at the top of the price but as soon as it looks bearish, the spread can immediately sit towards the bottom of the price.. in a volatile period, it jumps all over the place, up 5 pts, down 5 pts etc.
Generally though, I've been very happy with them.
BD

 

[LittleWhiteBull]

Bottomdollar

I agree with your second paragraph, I have noticed this too but take it to be one of the hazards of Spreadbetting.

It is indeed a very simple trading platform to use but my computer struggles with their charts - I think it's the speed of my line, so I use other charts, which are more flexible anyway, when I grow up I might progress to paying for my charting software and get realtime rather than 15 minute delay which is frustrating.

Thanks for the info Skimbleshanks - very helpful as ever.

 

[capitalspreads]

The problem with falling or rising markets is not our quotes but the delay in the actual exchange index price. If you purchase the right to access the actual Futures feed on the Dow (the CBOT) or the FTSE future from LIFFE you will see that our price is always around the Futures price.
We cannot 'call' the market (we dont know where it is going) but dont you feel it odd that everybody always complains that SB companies quote in the direction that the market is going??
This is because we follow the Futures market which move before the cash index markets, thus clients get the impression that we are calling our price in our favour against a market move.

Our traders are no better (or worse) than anyone else so why should they be able to predict a market move any better you? As with everything they can't (I wish they could!). Our prices are linked straight from the markets so if you get the impression that we are quoting higher (or lower) than the current real index price this is only because the futures, in that particular market, are telling us so.

If any client would like to take us up on it you are welcome to come in and watch our systems in action but do give us a bit of warning (so I can put a suit on!!)

Simon

 

[CityTrader]

Our traders are no better (or worse) than anyone else so why should they be able to predict a market move any better you? As with everything they can't (I wish they could!). Our prices are linked straight from the markets so if you get the impression that we are quoting higher (or lower) than the current real index price this is only because the futures, in that particular market, are telling us so.



Simon

perhaps not, but like every market maker in the world, your traders do I 'm sure ( personally I dont use your firm so cant be specific) "read the punter", and let's face it if the dow is up 100 points, and the momentum is up, most calls ( love to know the actual percentages) for quotes in the dow will be to buyers. So, whilst most spreadbetting market makers dont actually know wehre the market is going, they anticipate what Joey Mugboat-punter wants to do...

Having been a market maker for way too long, I know that unless I specifically wanted to sell into a rally, and didn;t want to miss a buyer, I would assume that every retail based broker call in an upward trending market was a buyer....

 

[capitalspreads]

citytrader
actually people tend to oppose moves so your instinctive 'dealers would quote higher' on a strong move up would be counterproductive!!

Not as easy as it looks eh.

I wonder how many times I have to say 'the prices are a straight link from the exchange' , in the six months of our being open we have not biased our prices once.

pippip

simon

 

[a0-0b]

If the prices are never biased and are based solely on the underlying security/future price, then why do sb companies not publish their spreads as a service to customers? What i mean here is chart your spread prices in real-time for customers to use as well as the 15-min delayed security chart. OK, so it costs money to provide the FTSE future as a real-time data feed to customers because you have to pay for it, but you wouldn't have to pay anyone to publish your spreads in real-time charting format.

 

[capitalspreads]

we do publish our spreads! See our Market Info sheets

as for the charting we are looking at creating charts from our own data at the moment but it is rather more difficult(and expensive) than we thought at first. And it would hardly reduce disputes as clients would claim we were altering them as well !!

It is easy to ask 'why cannot I have these charts?' etc.. but you must realise that we quote markets from virtually every major exchange so that the cost per client would be huge. We would be charged for each and every client who had access to our site. Nobody gives these charts away for free including much,much bigger companies than ourselves, (although the definition of 'free' might be disputed) this is nothing to do with spread quotes it is only to do with cost. The high/lows will be the same in 15 mins as they were at the time!

As I say we have nothing to gain by biasing prices so we dont.

good luck everyone

simon

 

[CityTrader]

So, you never, EVER run a book? You never take the other side of a punters' position? even when you know the most of your punters get it wrong? Admirable... if perhaps, a little innocent and naive.. but still admirable. I take my hat off to you, and if I ever lose faith in my current two spread betting frirms, I may give you a call...

 

[seguna]

Are you saying that your realtime prices are ALWAYS a fixed number of spreads around the true futures market price?

 

[a0-0b]

From your site (a very shortened and abreviated version intended to illustrate a point and not remove information):

CS quotes on FTSE 350 (...) : Minimum bet £1 per point ... CGSL 10-12% ... IMR 3-4%
... Quoting the next two quarters ... the quote spread will be based on the natural market bid offer spread ... price is adjusted for dividends ... findig costs and capital spreads spread.

Sorry, but this is not publishing your spreads for individual secutities, and nothing is said about non-uk shares. Although, granted, you publish information about indices and futures etc. etc.

As for reducing disputes, if punters have access to historical data for your spreads and the historical data for the underlying security they will see how the spreads change relative to the share, future or index. Personally i would expect the spread to deviate from the underlying security so that you can offset the bets you are receiving just as any bookies will change the odds as they receive bets. But if people can see that this happens to a certain extent on certain markets then they can accept that as part of the market or move elsewhere. And they can hardly complain about you altering historical data which everyone will have!!

but you must realise that we quote markets from virtually every major exchange so that the cost per client would be huge. We would be charged for each and every client who had access to our site

You would certainly be charged (i assume) if you provided me with real time streaming data for AAL.L for example. But i fail to see how you would be charged for providing me with your spreads on AAL.L in realtime in such a way that i can use them in the charting package of my choice. Your spreads are your business and nothing to do with the exchange. Infact i would probably pay a small amount for this information. Then i can go and get my own raw data source and compare your spreads to that source in may software, in my way. You could even integrate with standard software packages as a trading interface.

I accept that the infrastructure needed for this would be costly. But ask how may people here would like comething like this.

As I say we have nothing to gain by biasing prices so we dont.

If you don't thats fine. And if you do that's probably okay too, as long as we're aware of that. Either way, there are two people involved here, me (the punter) and you (the sb) and we need to find a way for us both to make money

----------------------------------

As an aside ... i know you quote a lot of markets, and that spreads change as the market changes etc. etc. but you know the "market information" provided for each market information box, any change of includeing the crurrent/tighest/widest spread fro the day/month and information about how close limits/stops can be to the current market?