Beach Runner said:
Boy, am I glad that's over! My horrible experience was with City Index although, to be fair they treated me right afterwards and it could have been any SB. I open and closed two trades that day and forgot to do what I usually did later. Ring and confirm that I was flat. I got a ring and they told me that they had just closed me out for lack of funds. I told them that I had no trade open and there was 5000 in the account. They politely told me that they had fullest confidence in their dealers and that I would have to prove it. Fortunately, I was not local and Spanish Telefonica came up with the times of all the calls that I had made to the UK. When I saw that on that day I had made four calls to them it had to be two to open and two to close, I knew that there was no mistake on my part.
City Index had wanted the exact times and I could not remember them. They found my closing
call on the tape and compensated me with a good trade, which they always do, to make me feel better, I suppose, but I told them that trading was hectic enough without those kinds of mistakes and closed my account.
There's a lesson there- although I doubt that there is any telephone trading these days, is there?
Split
Guess 90-95% lose money in that business. The 5-10% are the MM´s. It´s not for inexperienced traders. I´ve lost much money trying to beat them. Today I´m a better trader but still find it hard to beat them. Study and learn how it all works ans as always you need some background mtrl such as charts, P/C-ratio (the total volume & intraday volume). Buy some real stocks instead and put your money in on longer term because this circus is managed through the derivatives on many markets all having an influence on how your stock, sector, index is traded. You probably often get fooled by the order book and the volumes you see there. You probably sell when you should buy and vice verse. MM´s speak with each other through the order book and buy buying a stock one tick above or beneath a TL/SL so the others stay away an so on. Could keep on writing here for ever but the best advice I can give you is to stay away from those crooks and their products.
Beach Runner
Active member
- Messages
- 128
- Likes
- 2
Splitlink,
Hi. Don't know how much spread betting goes on by telephone now but it's still around so the SBs must still be making a profit from it. I think, as we all know, that the SB companies really took off with the growth of trading online.
Although it was a tougher experience (shouting your orders down the phone) I'm glad I had the experience as sitting at the keyboard is easy-peasy (I'm not talking about making profits here - just the technique of trading) in comparison.
Although, I do miss wearing those red braces over my pyjamas as I coughed each morning at 7.30am into the receiver:
"Give me a price on the Footsie"
"What's that? The bid/ask spread is 75 points? No problem..."
capitalspreads
Experienced member
- Messages
- 1,452
- Likes
- 79
mmmmmm
mauzj
Well-known member
- Messages
- 357
- Likes
- 37
Roberto said:
The idea was that I'd have a program to watch out for them to alert me. When they'd appear I was going to execute one leg over the phone while executing the other half over the internet.
Unfortunately, discussions on forums indicated that these rogue firms would start cancelling bets after a couple of months, and I'd experienced this with Sporting Index who used to cancel my bets at random and claim they were palpable errors.
mauzj
Well-known member
- Messages
- 357
- Likes
- 37
But surely it's only courteous to have manners?
I'll try telling them to f*** off next time they call and see what they do - treating the whole thing as a character building exercise. I have no intention of doing anymore business with them and have nothing to lose.
I'll try telling them to f*** off next time they call and see what they do - treating the whole thing as a character building exercise. I have no intention of doing anymore business with them and have nothing to lose.
henry766 said:
Yes indeed; I follow the principle. My guess is that in practice it would prove unreliable one way or another. You only need the briefest of delays to run into trouble with it; and like many forms of arbitrage, the percentage profit on each pair of trades would be very small. Sorry to be throwing a dampener on the idea, but I suspect that the returns are not worth the effort involved in setting the whole thing up. Would be interested to know what others think ...mauzj said:
you maybe courteous mauzj , but if your going to make it you've got to be a lot more single minded , ferociously so in my opinion, it's not about being rude or not, but being distracted by sales talk , start listening to their sales pitch, instead of discerning the most appropriate broker independently, and your in a sorry world of gullible indecision and how can i put this courteously , your trading ideas seem muddly at best , i don't think you'll find soros following your fone and internet method!!
Mauzj,
Were the prices really out of line in the instances where it occurred or was it marginal? The reason I ask is that it happens even when one uses one spread betting company and I have found that when the difference is marginal, there is not a problem (provided the trade is executed in the first place).
Were the prices really out of line in the instances where it occurred or was it marginal? The reason I ask is that it happens even when one uses one spread betting company and I have found that when the difference is marginal, there is not a problem (provided the trade is executed in the first place).
henry766 said:
I would also say to Mauzj that I don't think he has have enough legs. Arbitrage is for institutions, not for folk like us. I think that you have to try to meet SBs on the only field where you can beat them, i.e. try to predict a share (or whatever) that is going to move overnight and, possibly, for several days. That is where they cannot be sure of what will happen. They have all the staff and software necessary to handle arbitrage and intraday trading and they are very good at what they do.
To those that criticise FS. I'm puzzled. I have been betting with them since before they were online. They were a bit rough in the early days, but are much more sophisticated now and you can put limits and stops on- a recent addition. I have never had to ring them on a query for years. As for the sales staff ringing, don't thay all do that.?
Split
CityTrader
Established member
- Messages
- 666
- Likes
- 26
maxpain said:
A little contradictory fella. The MM's do NOT talk to each other through the order book. The LSE introduced central counter party clearing some while back ( 2? 2 1/2 years?) which means that MM's do NOT know who they have traded with on the order book - all fills come back ( electronically of course) with the central clearing counter parties name. NOT the true buyer or seller. SEAQ, is of course a quote driven system, and the only way to transact business for MM's is to call each other up- but it's a fairly confrontational system- with the LSE imposing minimum size 's that they have to trade amongst themselves once answering a "challenge line" ( dedicated STX line) . While it's fairly safe to say that all MM's probably have 1 or 2 mates round the markets who they may discuss order flows with, it will never be the whole market, and no, the order book NEVEr had any sort fo chat function- what used to happen was a MM may (say) hit a bid, find out who the buyer was ( pre central clearing days) then call that MM to find out what the full picture was IF they had a relationship.
