CMC - Cancelled my positions - is this legal?

[pander]

Hi, everyone,
Quite new to spreadbetting, but just had a bad experience.

I woke up this morning and placed some positions as usual waited for them to execute they executed green and showed on my balance sheet. I then closed the positions at profit, only to come back 10 mins later to my screen to a chat message stating that they have cancelled my orders both the open and closed positions as the market was closed at the time. So all my profit were wiped out.

I could understand if the trades were not executed e.g. white screen, but they had executed the orders both ways, am I missing something here, is this legal? It sounds like blatant theft to me.

I was told I was given a bad price, what has that got to do with me?

I telephoned to find out why, and was told I was given a bad price and that they can stop any executed trade at any time even if they have been executed, so this is worse then the bookmakers at least they do honour their bets.

Totally disgusted in this company whether it is legal or not.

ANY INFO ON THIS WOULD BE APPRECIATED AS I AM QUITE NEW TO THIS.

Great board.

 

[FetteredChinos]

yup, im afraid its legal, and you just have to live with it, im afraid.

they make their own prices and rules and you just have to live with them.

not a lot in life is fair, and im afraid this is another such thing.

fc

 

[gmca686]

Pander,
If you want detailed advice, provide detailed information. What market/instrument were you trading? What was the times of the trades. How many contracts, etc?
Something doesn't stack up! If a market is closed, then the CMC quoted price doesn't change, therefore it is impossible to make a profit?
Provide more info please!
regards, G McA

 

[pander]

yup, im afraid its legal, and you just have to live with it, im afraid.

they make their own prices and rules and you just have to live with them.

not a lot in life is fair, and im afraid this is another such thing.

fc

Thanks for that.

So what you are basically saying is that I am wasting my time with CMC. As soon as a profit gain appears they can cancel the positions when they feel like it.

Doesn't sound right to me, I don't think I could live with thinking that my orders could be cancelled at anytime.

Seems basically pointless trading with them, if that is the case.

Thanks again.

 

[FetteredChinos]

not really.. they generally have to have valid grounds for rejecting a price, otherwise they would be losing customers left, right and centre.

what was the nature of the bets? if the price was nowhere near that at the time, then im afraid CMC probably have a point.

what positions were rejected?

FC

 

[pander]

Pander,
If you want detailed advice, provide detailed information. What market/instrument were you trading? What was the times of the trades. How many contracts, etc?
Something doesn't stack up! If a market is closed, then the CMC quoted price doesn't change, therefore it is impossible to make a profit?
Provide more info please!
regards, G McA

Hi,
One of the trades was Astra Zeneca I noticed a sudden drop when I was watching the screen I placed the order, the order executed green within 3 seconds and it showed on my summary as executed. It slowly returned and I closed the open position at a profit, thus the position was completely closed and showing me in profit. I left the room and on returning found the chat window open to tell me they had closed my positions as the market was closed.

Why have they quoted prices, and executed them, and telling me at a later time that they had all been cancelled.

I could understand if it was closed and I was given a white screen stating the market was closed, but it wasn't and the trades were executed (opened and closed positions).

This makes the whole spreadbetting process pointless.

Sorry if I am missing something here, but is this normal.

 

[pander]

not really.. they generally have to have valid grounds for rejecting a price, otherwise they would be losing customers left, right and centre.

what was the nature of the bets? if the price was nowhere near that at the time, then im afraid CMC probably have a point.

what positions were rejected?

FC

This is totally crazy, the price was quoted on the screen. Am I supposed to check the prices realtime elsewhere before placing a bet. How am I supposed to know what is a good price or a bad price.

How did I not know that the company didnt just have a profits warning, etc, I don't know the price it is CMC that quote the price not me, I just agree if I want to buy at that price.

I normally buy on the dips this makes the whole trading system at CMC pointless if they can cancel my bets at anytime.

 

[timaru69]

Hi

I have had my share of troubles with CMC as well. On Wednesday they closed out a postion that was in Prodit and nowhere near my stop level and then they also failed to fill a limit order on another stock that I had pending.

To be fair they did correct very quickly but is does raise concerns over their level of internal controls. When I mentioned this to the dealer he said that problems like this are very rare. i disputed this as I had two errors in two hours on the same day and this type of thing has happened before.

I guess you have to carefully check your account to make sure these errors don't occur and shout quickly when they do.

Good Luck

 

[gmca686]

Pander,
I've had a look at AZN. The CMC 1 minute chart shows a large spike at 1010 hours. Top 2430, bottom 2346, open 2405, close 2370.9. I've looked at the LSE price feed from PROQUOTE. It does not show the spike, with a steady price at 2408. However, I notice that all my Proquote charting data has dots from 1009 to 1016, which means an interruption to the data supply.
Therefore, If this covers your incident, then CMC are within their rights to cancel trades based on bad data
Bad data can work against you in taking out stops, so others would be unhappy if the trades stood having been stopped out!
regards, G McA

 

[JillyB]

What time of day was the trade placed? From what you are saying it sounds as if it was just when the markets were closing. If so there are sometimes spikes like this as the daily adjustments are made and this can tip the trade into profit, but to close the trade then can't be done as its a 'false' price.

If you post more details one of us should be able to help.

 

[pander]

Pander,
I've had a look at AZN. The CMC 1 minute chart shows a large spike at 1010 hours. Top 2430, bottom 2346, open 2405, close 2370.9. I've looked at the LSE price feed from PROQUOTE. It does not show the spike, with a steady price at 2408. However, I notice that all my Proquote charting data has dots from 1009 to 1016, which means an interruption to the data supply.
Therefore, If this covers your incident, then CMC are within their rights to cancel trades based on bad data
Bad data can work against you in taking out stops, so others would be unhappy if the trades stood having been stopped out!
regards, G McA

Thanks for that

Yes the price dipped and I went long at this price about 3 mins later I closed the position, basically what I am saying is how can they open and close positions and then at a later date cancel it at their convenience, it makes me wonder if it had been a loss and not a profit would they have bothered cancelled, I dont think so.

This really degrades CMC as I cannot place an order now wondering if they will cancel it off. The whole idea in spreadbetting as most people would agree is to buy and sell on the dips and spikes, not long term or I would be buying stocks and bonds. So basically what is the point if buying on the dips or spikes dont exist and then cancel your orders.

This seems total stupidity and has totally thrown me this morning.

I wouldnt mind but the orders did go through and were opened and closed, it was sometime later that they cancelled them off. I just basically dont see the point in placing more trades waiting for them to be cancelled.

Thanks for your input on this situation.

 

[pander]

What time of day was the trade placed? From what you are saying it sounds as if it was just when the markets were closing. If so there are sometimes spikes like this as the daily adjustments are made and this can tip the trade into profit, but to close the trade then can't be done as its a 'false' price.

If you post more details one of us should be able to help.

This happened about 10 am I received nothing saying the position of the market, I just placed the trades when I saw the dip, CMC executed them with a green screen and I closed them off when the price returned and this was also executed green screen, I returned to my monitor 5 mins later approx to find they had cancelled all of my trades off. Why accept the orders and then at a later date cancel them?

This is looking totally dodgy to me, and hope this post is helping other people who maybe in the position this morning.

 

[Satori]

The way I'd look at it is like this: did it look like they'd made an obvious mistake to you? By this I mean if a solid security is trading at £10 on the market and their quote reads £5 it would look to me like a genuine mistake. In this case I'd probably accept that a genuine mistake has been made. You would have good reason to complain to the company that they should get their act together of course and you might wonder if they'd have corrected their 'obvious mistake' if the bet had gone against you, but I can't imagine the FSA being too interested in this sort of 'mistake'.

If, however, they're quoting something that doesn't look like it's outside of the realms of possibility and they then subsequently retract their position, then you may have more of a case. You can pretty much guarantee that they wouldn't have refunded you if the bet had gone against you, so the only reason they're stuffing you is because they lost. You took what looked like a genuine bet, you won and - I think - you may have a case. If so, check the following page to see if you do: http://www.fsa.gov.uk/consumer/02_HOW/Complain/mn_complaint.html

That could take ages of course, but if the company makes a habit of this sort of thing then the FSA may receive lots of complaints about them and that might gee them up into action.

The other thing you can do, of course, is to publicise it on places like this (which you've done). If the criticism is fair, people will listen and the company will suffer from lost customers and those that don't bother to sign with them in the first place after reading your post.

I think spread betting companies need a universal 'Code of Practise' to cover these things personally. People need to know just what constitutes a 'genuine mistake' and that it's not simply that a bet went against them.

 

[cj12]

I bet you if you had lost on the trade, they would honour it, only because you taken some money of them, the thief's

Tell me what time did you place you trade.

Sun

 

[pander]

The way I'd look at it is like this: did it look like they'd made an obvious mistake to you? By this I mean if a solid security is trading at £10 on the market and their quote reads £5 it would look to me like a genuine mistake. In this case I'd probably accept that a genuine mistake has been made. You would have good reason to complain to the company that they should get their act together of course and you might wonder if they'd have corrected their 'obvious mistake' if the bet had gone against you, but I can't imagine the FSA being too interested in this sort of 'mistake'.

If, however, they're quoting something that doesn't look like it's outside of the realms of possibility and they then subsequently retract their position, then you may have more of a case. You can pretty much guarantee that they wouldn't have refunded you if the bet had gone against you, so the only reason they're stuffing you is because they lost. You took what looked like a genuine bet, you won and - I think - you may have a case. If so, check the following page to see if you do: http://www.fsa.gov.uk/consumer/02_HOW/Complain/mn_complaint.html

That could take ages of course, but if the company makes a habit of this sort of thing then the FSA may receive lots of complaints about them and that might gee them up into action.

The other thing you can do, of course, is to publicise it on places like this (which you've done). If the criticism is fair, people will listen and the company will suffer from lost customers and those that don't bother to sign with them in the first place after reading your post.

I think spread betting companies need a universal 'Code of Practise' to cover these things personally. People need to know just what constitutes a 'genuine mistake' and that it's not simply that a bet went against them.

Thanks for that, great reply.
That was my whole idea in posting, to let other users know the position with CMC.

There wasnt a drastic drop in the price 30p on a £24.00 stock, was not a software mistake, I have seen similar drops regularly, especially when a drug result comes through.

It seems totally crazy why they have cancelled my bets on a 30p drop.

It is not the money, it is the principle that they have stuffed me here, it is the fact that the system is totally unreliable, cancelling orders after executed both ways on just over a 1% drop, seems stupid. Are they trying to lose customers.

Thanks again for your great input.

 

[JillyB]

I've attached a chart with the spike shown on it. It happened at 10.10am this morning - this, I believe, has something to do with sale of futures etc that goes on at the Stock Exchange between this time and around 10.30am.

I think they are wrong to show your tickets as being filled - and this would be the main point.

However if you were trading AZN prior to this with a stop set, then this sudden price action would probably have closed the trade. As they - honestly so - do not do let this happen, then they can't honour any trades made at this time to take advantage of the spike either. Legally you can't do both - it has to be one thing or the other.

I think if they started hitting the stops of genuine trades because of the spike, then they would have a lot more disgruntelled customers.

Did you actually lose money on the trade? Or did they just set you back to the position you were before?

 

[neil]

Try CFD's

Pander
Have you looked into CFD trading. OK - not tax free but at least you have a chance to make a profit :|

 

[Tuffty]

pander,

It does look like a bad price to me. If you look at the actual trade list (from MoneyAM for example) at those times something odd happenned. I'm not sure how it all works but It looks like trades from 10.09 on were not reported, and then started up again at 10.15. The first trade reported looks like the openning auction results which may have messed the price stream up.

This suggests it was outside the control of CMC but going back on trades even if it wasn't their fault is a disadvantge of spread betters. I've not had such a problem but then I'm not as nibble as you.

EDIT: SEE POSTS BELOW RE INTRADAY AUCTION

 

[bulldozer]

Hi All,
Sorry to hear about your problems.
But as an option player we dont EVER get this sort of problems :cheesy: Thank God.
Sounds like cmc are a cowboy outfit :cheesy: are they control'd by the FSA ?

If they [cmc] give a price good or bad they should stick with it!! its not the clients FAULT!!

Bull

 

[oatman]

They should tin their "traders". They wouldn't last 5 minutes if they had to wear their own errors like we all had to :cheesy: