Best Thread Capital Spreads

[Uncle]

Rookie

You do not say whether you are using live or delayed prices when comparing the price in C S simulator. If the latter then no wonder you are getting the results you quote. A further point with C S simulator is the price shown against your buy price is the current bid/offer and not the middle price which most other S B companies use in their simulator.

I have a live feed from eSignal into Metastock Pro, and do not experience the problem you refer to either in the C S simulator or live trading.

Always remember the simulator is just that.........for practice only.

John

 

[Roberto]

Uncle is right, TheNovice. I have never had those problems at all with CS. I imagine his suggested reasons are right too. If someone's finding City Index prices more tradable then CS, there has to be a "concealed explanation" for the problem somewhere, because that simply ain't so.

 

[TheNovice]

Hi all
I use ADVFN (Wall Street daily cash) live prices in addition to Scottrade and MetaTrader price feeds into my Metastock Pro. The ADVFN and MetaTrader are mid prices for the daily cash Dow therefore; I expect the price to be in the middle (approx. if no bias in the spread) of bid and offer of CS.
If the market is quite, it often is the case however, as the market starts moving they quickly become out of step with each other. For example if the price starts to move up I have seen on numerous occasions that the bid price is 5 or 6 points above the mid price (as reported by ADVFN and MetaTrader).
The problem is, that I look at my chart and decide to buy on breakout then switch to CS simulator place an order immediately. The order sometimes gets filled at e.g. 5 (current Bid above ADVFN mid price) + 5 the spread (Ask price) =10. I sell when the price has run out of steam (on my chart) by which time the CS prices (and I assume future prices) has stabilized around mid prices again, resulting in paying a lot more than 5 points .
I presume if I buy on strength and sell on strength I would not have the above problem or better still if I buy on weakness and sell on strength I can do away with the spread altogether! (Wouldn’t that be nice ). At other times their price is a fixed offset away from my mid prices, which makes placing stop and limit order very difficult. When you are not trading you can easily compare your real-time chart data and CS Wall street daily cash prices to see what I mean. The reason why I mentioned CityIndex is because they also offer a trading simulator, which I am going to try. I run the above test with their prices yesterday although, their Bid and Ask price is always around ADVFN mid price, from the quick test I have done it seems they bias their spread against the trend.
Uncle you said you have checked their prices in both simulator and real live trading and did not experience the problem I experienced, perhaps I am using the wrong data. I use the symbol DOWI:INDU (ADVFN) that gives the same pricing as the other two feeds I mentioned above.

 

[Uncle]

Uncle you said you have checked their prices in both simulator and real live trading and did not experience the problem I experienced, perhaps I am using the wrong data. I use the symbol DOWI:INDU (ADVFN) that gives the same pricing as the other two feeds I mentioned above.

Regret I cannot comment on ADVFN as I have no need to subscribe to same. The symbol INDU is correct for the Dow daily, so maybe the discrepancy is down to your converting the data from ADVFN. I can only reiterate i have not experienced any difficulty with my data flow.

John

 

[the blades]

Hi all
I presume if I buy on strength and sell on strength I would not have the above problem or better still if I buy on weakness and sell on strength I can do away with the spread altogether! (Wouldn’t that be nice ). .

Hi The Novice,

I've recently been trialing a system which sells the FTSE on strength and buys on weakness (contrary to my momentum style ) - after 13 trades (not enough yet I know) my returns have overcome the spread and surpassed it by 5 points per trade. I am not referring to profit here - simply that if I use the quoted index price to calculate returns, the system performs far worse than the price received from the SB co. So any bias CAN, in some circumstances, work in your favour .

I will post more results when the sample size is more significant, but my fingers are crossed.

UTB

 

[capitalspreads]

novice

i am sorry but you are not correct.

City Index quote the Wall street cash against the futures not against INDU (cash ticker). The futures move much faster than the cash index because the futures only rely on one ticker moving whereas the cash index relies on all 30 stocks trading. Also if you look at your charts you will see that the dow cash index always starts from the previous nights close even though there may have been a major number out at 13.30 and the cash index opens at 14.30. So if anyone was quoting off INDU at 14.30 they may be quoting over 100 points wrong for around 15 minutes whilst all the various 30 stocks uncross on the US exchange floor. Any SB company quoting off the cash index would soon lose vast sums of money as the arbitragers got hold of them and took them to the cleaners!

Our wall street cash price is a fixed difference from the futures price which we quote all day long. And is based upon the 'Fair Value'. The fair value is not some number that we 'make up' it can be found on various financial sites. We use bloomberg terminal.. type in FV (enter). Sometimes the fair value can be out by a pip or two or may change slightly during the day as various announcements are made.

on another note. If anyone really thinks that they can make money opposing market moves then..good luck..I am not giving any state secrets away by saying that we as an SB company make more money from contra trading than any other type of activity. (trying to pick tops and bottoms of market moves is a mugs game) In general SB companys (not us) will bias against the move because their positions have been built up by clients who have contra trend traded and so 'blades' is quite right when he/she says that often the bias may work for you if you enter each trade with no 'view'.

good luck

Simon

 

[the blades]

novice



on another note. If anyone really thinks that they can make money opposing market moves then..good luck..I am not giving any state secrets away by saying that we as an SB company make more money from contra trading than any other type of activity. (trying to pick tops and bottoms of market moves is a mugs game)

good luck

Simon

Hello Simon,

Maybe this was aimed at my post above (?) - just to clarify that the system is not trying to cash in opposing major trends - just short term moves. However, my point was really answeing the charge that the SB bias always wipes out profit - with this sytem any bias (or the futures price itself) seems to work in your favour, even if overall the system loses money. Time will tell.

UTB

 

[henry766]

isn't goerge soros mkt theory called reflexivity which is involved in fading the mkt?

 

[capitalspreads]

blades

sorry it wasnt actually aimed at you ..... i did make an amendment to my comment but forgot to post it..

please see amendment... AND if you see biased prices trade on them ...always remember that the markets will move in the direction that ..'causes the greatest amount of pain to the greatest number of people'. ...always remember that that fund managers etc dont really feel pain only private traders do...

so if you look at things in a tiny microcosm (not sure if i spelt that right) the spread betting companies will often reflect what is happening in the market as a whole. So if everyone is buying off the SB companies ( and thus they bias to the upside) the chances are that private traders are buying off everyone else as well therefore the market is likely going to fall (!) and vice versa... so as a true cynic would say 'watch the bias' and trade in the opposite direction !!!
At least you will have narrowed the spread !


Simon

 

[cj12]

Capitalspreads

Come on Simon Give us screen price to place our orders, not you quotation price,Fin spreads/cityindex/dff/and many more,offer screen price. I think you are the only firm not to offer this.

Give us the choice
sun

 

[cc1]

Come on Sun123. That's a bit out of order - not one of those firms you mention can you actually trade all the time at screen price.
The only frustration with cs is when I go for a price and say there is only 5 shares at the screen price so they kill the order when in fact I would be quite happy to accept the next closest 0.5 as there is say 30000 shares there. This is the problem with fill or kill but since both IG and City Index operate this way and Fins is fill or refuse to quote I don't see there is alot to complain about.

 

[capitalspreads]

Sun 123

well ok, I will look into this but at the moment this is not in development. (which means a long time as we are working on other projects). I would still say that we actually offer the better service with our tighter prices(but then I would do wouldn't I) as you would still be filled at a more advantageous price.

Simon

 

[techcherry]

talking about screen prices....

well I would like ask you all something....
this is not the first time it happen , but today was twice one after the other ....
what it happen was, I am trading the nymex (oil) , and I bougth (I am shorting...)1st at a price of 40.89 and just after I tried again at 40.94 and unfortunately , I got the two times an answer the DEALER didn't respond, what I wonder is , I honour my positions, and in this case I lost a profit of £230 and at the moment I am in lost + £300, do you think this is fare ?
please give me your opinion, because personally I believe they should honour the price the some way I honour my positions...
thanks...

 

[cj12]

Techcherry

Are you talking about DFF.They are good at this

Simon

Thanks for looking in to screen prices In the future,.

Sun

 

[techcherry]

Techcherry

Are you talking about DFF.They are good at this

Simon

Thanks for looking in to screen prices In the future,.

Sun

sorry my ignorance... what you mean about dff...

 

[techcherry]

It really pi...off..., because eve3n last week I lost £2k , and I honoured didn't I...so they should honour their system and prices...

 

[techcherry]

It really pi...off..., because eve3n last week I lost £2k , and I honoured didn't I...so they should honour their system and prices...

...plus , more then an hour ago , I send the "man" an email , cumplaining about the situation, and still didn't got an answer... and at the moment I am down £520 from a profit of £230 , which for them probaly is nothing but for me is money, plus is the bloo...PRINCIPLE !!!!

 

[capitalspreads]

techcherry

if you receive the message 'dealer not responded' ..this means that your internet link to us has gone down...it is not something we can do anything about it is a problem at your end. or somewhere in between..

the dealer not responded message is a 'timed out' message and comes up if no response has been received after 20seconds... this ONLY happens when the connection has been lost. We never leave trades to expire (we may not allow a trade... 'trade decline') but we never ignore it.

Simon

You must either call us immediately or log in again

 

[techcherry]

techcherry

if you receive the message 'dealer not responded' ..this means that your internet link to us has gone down...it is not something we can do anything about it is a problem at your end. or somewhere in between..

the dealer not responded message is a 'timed out' message and comes up if no response has been received after 20seconds... this ONLY happens when the connection has been lost. We never leave trades to expire (we may not allow a trade... 'trade decline') but we never ignore it.

Simon

You must either call us immediately or log in again

Im sorry, but not just I have broadband 512k but I am also connect to finspreads at some time , and no problems from this side , I can garatee you that ... that was a good excuse...
plus, I have been always logged in , and still are, so I would like to know how do you explain that, probaly you can see in your system I never logged out... so where is the problem?

 

[techcherry]

...and also ...how come if I lost connection I was still seeing the prices , once I even tryed to close it again at 40.94 ...and also I never been logged out, my connection was alway's on , because I had alway's my price feeds on????