Best Thread Capital Spreads

[chiefchimpanzee]

I agree with Arabianights. Do it!

 

[Ross Spur]

They all have to make a profit why the big deal ?

If they don’t make a profit then they don't exist and if they don’t exist then you don’t have a place to trade tax free

They are a company after all!

Profit is the name of the game.

I have no objection to LCG making a profit. You just wonder why they go to the bother, when it's possible to make such huge amounts of money scalping on latency.

 

[Ross Spur]

P.S.

Simon - if you want prospreads to take off - do these two things:

1. Make all orders actually submit to the real market. Allow traders to register with the exchange, get an ITM, receive rebates, etc.
2. Go to pennies a round trip above say 10k lots/month.

You'll be doing ten million round trips a month within a quarter if you do this.

and
3. Name change to ProFutures?

 

[chiefchimpanzee]

Lol Ross.

Just read Simon's bio. Aged 49 now.

He joined LCG in 2003 - so aged 42

According to his bio in the 2009 Annual Report - he has "held senior positions in a number
of European banks during more than 25 years in the City."

That's a serious lot of achievements since starting at the age of 17. You're a smart man Simon...so go on take out ProSpreads.

 

[montmorencyt2w]

How lazy are you lot? It's all going to be here somewhere: http://www.londoncapitalgroup.com/investorinfo.html

You even get to see how much Simon earns if you want

Found that last one .

Could not find number of clients so far.

Anyone?

Interesting that Prospreads did not make a profit in 2009.

Interesting that they have an MT4 platform, but it's not spread-betting.


EDIT: Found it: it was 51,240 UK SB accounts in 2009.

I don't know if that includes Prospreads (since that is in Gibraltar).

I am guessing that it does not include the white label partners (Tradefair et al).

0.5M FSB trades per month.

39% of total clients were active during the year

Average trades per day rose 14% to 23,975 (2008:20,967).

 

[chiefchimpanzee]

on page 10 - it says their client numbers have risen to 741.

Yep 741!



Edit: Nevermind that seems to confusingly refer to something else. Not sure what though

 

[montmorencyt2w]

on page 10 - it says their client numbers have risen to 741.

Yep 741!



Edit: Nevermind that seems to confusingly refer to something else. Not sure what though

I think that is their Forex platform.

 

[PipStar]

Despite all this talk, no one including CS has shown us any proof that this latency trading is actually possible and happening regularly in this day and age. I'm not saying it cannot happen at all but to be able to make a trading system out of it is quite far fetched. But I suppose from a spreadbet company point of view you get suspicious anyway when you see aggressive scalpers taking money from you. There is a difference between a trader who waits for latency (good luck) and one who does many scalps and the spreadbet company dont like both and I reckon that's where they get a bit mixed up. A scalper is trading on momentum and does a lot of trades so it's quite possible that they sometimes get ahead of the price move if the platform is slow whether it is intentional or not. And therefore they are more likely to be seen as latency traders. So it is really a platform issue that needs to be addressed but as we see the easy way out for the spreadbet company is to put these traders on dealer confirm for a quick fix.

 

[Ross Spur]

Found it: it was 51,240 UK SB accounts in 2009.

I don't know if that includes Prospreads (since that is in Gibraltar).

I am guessing that it does not include the white label partners (Tradefair et al).

0.5M FSB trades per month.

39% of total clients were active during the year

Average trades per day rose 14% to 23,975 (2008:20,967).

So, just over one trade per active client per day. If 'active' means at least one trade, I wonder how many of those 20k use the platform regularly? Probably 10% of the total make 90% of the trades?

 

[PipStar]

CS offers both spreadbetting and CFD's on the same platform. What is the difference really apart from the tax free on spreadbetting? Why would someone decide to trade CFD's instead, are there any advantages? Just want to know what was the purpose of CS introducing these CFD's?

 

[tar]

CS offers both spreadbetting and CFD's on the same platform. What is the difference really apart from the tax free on spreadbetting? Why would someone decide to trade CFD's instead, are there any advantages? Just want to know what was the purpose of CS introducing these CFD's?

some dont like the sound of "betting" ...

 

[tar]

Despite all this talk, no one including CS has shown us any proof that this latency trading is actually possible and happening regularly in this day and age. I'm not saying it cannot happen at all but to be able to make a trading system out of it is quite far fetched. But I suppose from a spreadbet company point of view you get suspicious anyway when you see aggressive scalpers taking money from you. There is a difference between a trader who waits for latency (good luck) and one who does many scalps and the spreadbet company dont like both and I reckon that's where they get a bit mixed up. A scalper is trading on momentum and does a lot of trades so it's quite possible that they sometimes get ahead of the price move if the platform is slow whether it is intentional or not. And therefore they are more likely to be seen as latency traders. So it is really a platform issue that needs to be addressed but as we see the easy way out for the spreadbet company is to put these traders on dealer confirm for a quick fix.

It is only an excuse , they want to shut down profitable scalpers because their trades is not hedgeable ...

 

[spinola]

Couldn't someone with a big tax bill also have a punt and offset any "CFD" losses against any other earned income ? So it's a NO RISK way to punt providing you can use another tax liability ?

 

[capitalspreads]

Prospreads

unfortunately the exchanges charge rather more than a few pence per contract.. we must also pay for all the linkages/support/hosting/staff/gaming duty etc etc. Not only this but Prospreads is under Gibraltan 'FSA' rules which are very much more restrictive than European/UK when it comes to Retail clients. All in all it means that costs per client are much heavier (which is probably why there is only one SB company in what, one would have thought, should be a fertile territory)

chief
17 when i joined the market..? LCG is still 'the city' so over 25 years from 48 ... 21 when i first worked in the sq mile.

MT4.. yes we do have an MT4 offering (anyone can sign up to it if they like) www.lcgmetatrader.com but it is focused on commodities currency and indices. (no equities, the MT4 platform is rather slow if you put too much on it)and is a cfd equivalent. We have also launched our new cfd platform www.capitalcfds.com for those who prefer this product.

Simon

 

[chiefchimpanzee]

Tar precisely my point. Their excuse is rubbish. Also the way they deal with honest traders who know how to trade well but might want to stay on the SB platform for tax reasons, is ridiculous.

Simon I'd love for you to clear it up. Do Tradefair and Dealing Desk use your traders too or do they have their own? Was Nick right in saying it was you lot who put me on refer to dealer?

 

[tar]

Tar precisely my point. Their excuse is rubbish. Also the way they deal with honest traders who know how to trade well but might want to stay on the SB platform for tax reasons, is ridiculous.

Simon I'd love for you to clear it up. Do Tradefair and Dealing Desk use your traders too or do they have their own? Was Nick right in saying it was you lot who put me on refer to dealer?

Tradefair and DD is a white label , they have same address and offices = CS .

 

[arabianights]

Prospreads

unfortunately the exchanges charge rather more than a few pence per contract.. we must also pay for all the linkages/support/hosting/staff/gaming duty etc etc. Not only this but Prospreads is under Gibraltan 'FSA' rules which are very much more restrictive than European/UK when it comes to Retail clients. All in all it means that costs per client are much heavier (which is probably why there is only one SB company in what, one would have thought, should be a fertile territory)

I mean a few pence over the exchange + clearing house fees. So yeah it won't be pennies with commodities but it could still be considerably cheaper than it is.

So say from memory LIFFE + LCH fees are roughly 56p a round trip on short sterling, and less after rebates, you could charge 80 or 90p a round trip. Simple

Restricting to non-retail clients wouldn't be a problem as the product wouldn't be aimed at them.

 

[capitalspreads]

pip star/tar/chief

as you sit in front of one pc screen and have no real information to back up your statements i will just refer any readers back to previous comments. Scalper/latency trading is not acceptable to Market Makers not just SB companies but also to Market Makers in all offerings (banks will not give their FX price feeds to toxic flow customers) LCG has probably the most liquid FX platform in London with the 16 biggest FX banks on the planet adding liquidity and still they will identify individual clients and refuse to quote their prices to them. I do not know how often I can say this before some of the more persistent threaders get the point.

in any market if you are frequency trading you will lose sometimes. FACT. if I have a client who trades 30 times in a day and either makes or scratches EVERY SINGLE time then statistically this is impossible. Try tossing a coin and ending up on heads 30 times out of 30 (a market can only go up or down, 50/50 at any given moment). That is why people get put on dealer acceptance

if a client is a 'good trader' then he will be a good trader on any platform. If we have put a trader on Dealer acceptance and this is unacceptable then there are numerous other providers out there. I suspect though that most find that they lose on the 'faster' platforms or get put on Dealer approval pretty quickly with the smaller providers.

chief

as i have no idea who you are your question is pretty irrelevent. TF and DD are trading names of LCG and so all trades come via our dealers.

Simon

 

[montmorencyt2w]

Tradefair and DD is a white label , they have same address and offices = CS .

I don't think that is strictly correct.

They are "white label partners", and are separate companies, as understand it.

They may use the same dealing-desk/traders, but I'm guessing they have a separate client base.

I think that Tradefair's address is actually the same as Betfair's, of which they are a part.

The annual report of LCG talks about them making these partnership agreements and hoping to hold on to them. This wouldn't be the case if they were really part of CS.

I don't know how the technicalities work, but LCG seems to provide the underlying platform, and then the partners put their own bells and whistles on top.


Perhaps Simon will correct this view if necessary , if he isn't totally fed up of this thread by now.

 

[tar]

I don't think that is strictly correct.

They are "white label partners", and are separate companies, as understand it.

They may use the same dealing-desk/traders, but I'm guessing they have a separate client base.

I think that Tradefair's address is actually the same as Betfair's, of which they are a part.

The annual report of LCG talks about them making these partnership agreements and hoping to hold on to them. This wouldn't be the case if they were really part of CS.

I don't know how the technicalities work, but LCG seems to provide the underlying platform, and then the partners put their own bells and whistles on top.


Perhaps Simon will correct this view if necessary , if he isn't totally fed up of this thread by now.

Yeah they have their own clients , but still same office , they r introducing brokers , check the address at the bottom of the page compare it with CS's

http://www.tradefair.com/
http://www.capitalspreads.com/public/