South Africa - any traders here ?

R

rog1111

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Hi

I was wondering whether any S. African traders can advise me on the state of internet connectivity in the country. Is broadband available yet ? If so, what are the speed, reliability and prices like ?

It is 3 years since I last left Durban, so I'm a little out of touch with what's going on over there, but I'll be in Durbs from the end of November 04, for a few months. I usually spend many hours a day online (in the UK), but obviously this may not be possible in SA, requiring different trading strategies.

Thanks in advance

rog1111
 
Hi there,

I think you'll find that you still have to pay to connect to the internet with companies like Mweb or ABSA. I'm not sure about broadband.

I recently married a South African and I'm very interested to find out if trading online is an option out there as we may move at some point. Her parents are from Durban also!

I look forward to any responses you get.
 
Yes it is possible because I know of one guy who trades from SA using direct access.


Paul
 
When I left the country, the dial up connections were awful, frankly, and it seems that not much has changed there. In general, surge protection on the phone line is an absolute must due to very frequent thunderstorms in Summer (not so much in Cape Town). Some preliminary browsing reveals that 512K ADSL Broadband is now available at a cost of around £60 per month from Telkom, the state owned monopoly, which is rather expensive compared to the UK, especially taking into account local earnings in Rands. Also, it seems that copper wire theft is still a massive problem in many parts of the country, hence your line could be missing altogether for several weeks sometimes ! However, the climate is great, and the time zone (GMT +2) is good for trading, so what the hell !

rog1111
 
Trading in Zimbabwe

I daytrade the es and the ym from Harare on dialup and most of the time have no probs. The lightning thing is an issue.
 
hi tradedog1

which platform do you use ?

rog1111

tradedog1 said:
I daytrade the es and the ym from Harare on dialup and most of the time have no probs. The lightning thing is an issue.
Click to expand...
 
rog1111 said:
hi tradedog1

which platform do you use ?

rog1111
Click to expand...

I chart off Tradestation (2000i). Broker is IB. Interface with IB thru Autotrader. I also have a chat room open through PalTalk.

Regards

Tradedog
 
Im glad to hear that its possible from Zims. Locally IB charts now seem to be OK & I can only assume that it was in fact a temporary IB issue. Are you on copperwire or fibre optic up there ?

rog1111

tradedog1 said:
I chart off Tradestation (2000i). Broker is IB. Interface with IB thru Autotrader. I also have a chat room open through PalTalk.

Regards

Tradedog
Click to expand...
 
rog1111 said:
Im glad to hear that its possible from Zims. Locally IB charts now seem to be OK & I can only assume that it was in fact a temporary IB issue. Are you on copperwire or fibre optic up there ?

rog1111
Click to expand...

Fibre to junctions then copper distribution into homes.

Have u looked at possibility of daytrading and SA Futures indices? Is there enough volume?volatility? US hours are killing my family life and cannot find any minis in UK/Europe
 
They keep pinching copper wire down here, bit of a problem in some areas.

My brother-in-law's father has a seat on the JSE, and they move a fair volume of SA index futures, I'll be seeing him within a week or so & post all details of charges, spreads, viability etc

Currency futures might solve the trading hours problem ? EUR/E7 & GBP move nicely during euro hours, I am often all done by 10h00 GMT, noon local. Don't know if you are into currencies though ?

rog1111

tradedog1 said:
Fibre to junctions then copper distribution into homes.

Have u looked at possibility of daytrading and SA Futures indices? Is there enough volume?volatility? US hours are killing my family life and cannot find any minis in UK/Europe
Click to expand...
 
Hi,

I'm trading the ES through a Chicago broker from Pietermaritzburg using ADSL from Telkom.

They sell you the standard 512/256 KB package available from the likes of BT et al but in reality the service is about half the speed of BT and the quality is very poor. My trading paltforms frequently drop the connections which obviously costs me when using simulated stops.

Lightening and power outages are also a problem as is the general incompetence from Telkom. If anything goes wrong don't expect to be able to call a help desk - you need to know how to fix it yourself. You can call a help desk but I think that calling themselves a "help desk" is gross misrepresentation.

The cost for ADSL is R1000/month or about $150 and is considered to be the top worst value for money broadband offering in the world when comparing bang for buck. You are also limited to 3Gb bandwidth/month so you have to be very careful about how you use it. Each extra 3Gb costs another R300/month.

The reason the speed often suffers is because they shape the service to give certain protocols priority in order to prevent P2P users from abusing the bandwidth.

I'm planning on leaving SA again for the sole reason that I can't get a reasonable broadband connection.

Hope this helps.
 
DeltaGuy

Thanks for that, although it makes for quite depressing reading ! Nothing much has changed then since I left SA in 1999. If only the idiots would realise that there's a far larger market waiting if pricing was right. Might as well just use normal dial up, warts and all.

If you use IB to trade ES then all the stop types that are non-native to Globex are held on the IB servers, so you don't need to be connected, might be worth consideration ?

cheers

rog1111


DeltaGuy said:
Hi,

I'm trading the ES through a Chicago broker from Pietermaritzburg using ADSL from Telkom.

They sell you the standard 512/256 KB package available from the likes of BT et al but in reality the service is about half the speed of BT and the quality is very poor. My trading paltforms frequently drop the connections which obviously costs me when using simulated stops.

Lightening and power outages are also a problem as is the general incompetence from Telkom. If anything goes wrong don't expect to be able to call a help desk - you need to know how to fix it yourself. You can call a help desk but I think that calling themselves a "help desk" is gross misrepresentation.

The cost for ADSL is R1000/month or about $150 and is considered to be the top worst value for money broadband offering in the world when comparing bang for buck. You are also limited to 3Gb bandwidth/month so you have to be very careful about how you use it. Each extra 3Gb costs another R300/month.

The reason the speed often suffers is because they shape the service to give certain protocols priority in order to prevent P2P users from abusing the bandwidth.

I'm planning on leaving SA again for the sole reason that I can't get a reasonable broadband connection.

Hope this helps.
Click to expand...
 
Anybody from SA around? I'm originally from Cape Town living in the UK now
 
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