Spreadbetting The Forex

Im not sure what you mean by "engine" but i think you are refering to the way you place bets (trades). It is very similar to placing a Forex trade except that its not done in lots, its done by £ per pip. With E*Trade and IG Index you just sign in to the website and its all there for you. They even have their own charting software (mostly java) but they are pretty basic, I use MetaTrader as its free. Orders and stops can be placed in exactly the same way and the choices of what order type you can use will depend on which broker you use.

Personally I have found IG Index works for me as they have a nifty peice of software that sits on your cell phone, pics of screen shots can be found on my thread as shown a couple of posts back.

Hope that helps

Lyndon

I thought Betonmarkets were a Fixed Odds betting company, correct me if I'm wrong!! I still have an account with them from my Fixed Odds betting days, before I discovered Forex SB and I had no problems with them at all.

Regards

DS

Hi.
Well, I'm not exaggerating when I say I'm gob-smacked at the response to this thread. I thought there was only going to be dsinclair999 and myself involved.

Anyway, welcome to the thread, but I have to admit I'm a bit of a beginner with spread-betting so any advice would be better coming from one of the other contributors who've already shown that they've been at it for quite some time.

I see that there's already one or two lads wanting further info, so with a bit of luck, everybody will benefit. Already, I'm seeing some valuable info being posted, so thanks for sharing, lads.

Dave, thanks for joining, mate. And thanks for reprinting all that info that you gave me in the other thread.

Lyndon001, welcome mate, and this thread or yours, it's all the same to me, so long as we help other people along the way.

Cheers for now.

Hi Eyevoltage

Ive just PM'd one of the moderators and asked him to merge the two threads and i told him it I would leave it up to him which way round he did it so heres to joining forces.

Lyndon

Hello Lyndon.
Yeah, I was a bit puzzled then when I tried to access the other thread, but being the intelligent sort of chap that I am, I realized that we'd probably merged!!

Anyway, as I said last night, even though I'm fairly familiar with SB, I'm still not too clear with one or two things. For instance, whereas the lads using brokers trade in lots of 1 or 2 or 3 and take profits by closing 1 lot at a time, is something similar possible in spread-betting?

Also Dave told me that it isn't possible to have trailing stops. He said that one had to put the stops in manually, which would be a right pain in the ass, as far as I can see.

Well, it's now 7.50pm and I still haven't fed the inner man, so I'd better get the nosebag on!!

See you soon.

Hi, Spreadtraders.


I am trying the GFT demo platform, Has anyone used it on a live account ?

Also Worldspreads and their 1 pip spread, Sounds good BUT


Mart

Eyevoltage,


There is away to do a similar thing to lots. Basically you just have to decide how big one lot is to start with. For example I spread bet at 15 pounds per point. So in effect I could look at that as 3 lots of 5. I could partially close some of my position by simply going to the trade box and inputting an opposing position of say 5 pounds. Now I would have 10 pounds on the table or in effect 2 lots. Does that make any sense?

Whilst on this thread I thought I should let you guys know about the biggest crooks on this planet.

They are a company called MDSSpreads and heres my story....

Octobers non-farm payrole, 2 minutes before I had 2 orders on one to sell and on to buy at 15 pips either side of the market price. My intention is top cancel one order as soon as the news comes out and trail my stop with the other. News comes out and I cancel one order. The market rises, but wait my buy order which I didn't cancel has dissappeared, it isn't in my open positions apparently I cancelled that as well. OK fair enough.... revision comes out I try to put a manual sell order on, what happens no rejection, again everything dissapears. 3 minutes later I find myself in a position which is 45 Pips negative. I eventually manage to close the position at 49 pips.

I call them to find out what happened and listen to this for a contradiction... "we got you in at the earliest possible opportunity, at 1:33pm" wait for it what was the price they got me in at - 1.8?95. A price right at the very top of the spike, a price that was only available at about 1:30 and 20-30 secs. So if their dealers manually entered me at 1.33 surely another price was available????????

Make of it what you will, but so far I am in a massive battle with them, and their Director is the most unhelpful person in the world. I origionally made a complaint via their support, a place where they told me to complain, I got a reply from their Director, then when he saw I wasn't going to lie down and then refered me to someone else as per their "Internal Policy" mmmmm........ Does this sound like someone trying to shift responsibility?????????????????

CapitalSpreads did the same thing to a friend.


Got him in at the top of the spike and he could not close it until it got to the bottom .

This must be the trading desk when they do that

Think it may be best to use someone like EFX if you want to trade fast markets and pay the tax !


Mart

MDS, Capital Spreads and Etradespreadbetting all use the same platform. All three are probably fed by Capital Spreads. The price you pay for trading at the most volatile times around news releases like FOCM and Non Farms is very big spreads and whipsaws. If you want to straddle use a company that allows OCO trades to be set up. Finspreads does this and this means whichever order is triggered first, the other is automatically cancelled.

Please refrain from mentioning products and sevices if you have less than 50 posts. There are a few posts like that in here. This is an anti spam measure we have here... Thanks in advance for your help,

Scott

Very commendable, nothing worse than a first post “Hey guy’s look at this website, what do you think”
And I think we all know who the worst offenders are.

However (there is always a however) surely there must be a grey area where you see obvious traders discussing important matters.

And considering that most of the posters on here have less than 50 posts the thread will probably die a swift death.

Just a thought .

Mart

ok reference the news trading thing, first of all let me refer back to posts 24 & 28. But first please read my rantings here, i may be completely off the mark in what i say but at this moment in time this is what i believe, if you disagree please enlighten me, either way i dont believe there are many private speculators who know enough about the reports and the smoke and mirrors that surround them coupled with alledged broker shennanagens (hope that is spelt rite as ive never used that word before) to safely trade them...

You will find this (and proberbly others) forum littered with threads started by disgruntled traders asking for advise because they have been ripped off by their broker at news time. Its always the same thing, stops missed, massive slippage, orders disapearing off the screen. It is said of most brokers at some time or another, ive even done it myself in this thread.

Personally I dont believe any forex or spread betting company has your interests at heart, but there again i dont believe that they will directly rip you off. That said, put yourself in the position of the MD or director or whoever is "Big Cheese". How would you feel about giving tons of cash away every major news report, imagine at 13:29 on the first Friday of the month your system is fit to bust with every man and his dog trying to get their straddles in place. If I was that person I would be very keen to find a way to even things up a bit, if i could body swerve only half of the punters and put them on the wrong side of the trade, wouldnt that solve the problem cos the losers would pay the winners. if your trading desk struggles and thows everything into confusion for that vital minute would you want to fix it??? If orders disapear off the screen while the system is trying to keep up with the trading and only get filled when there is a lull in the battle in other words the top of a whipsawing spike is it in your interest to fix that??? I think not

My attitude is, if something doesnt suit you change it or work around it. I have traded the various news reports with mixed results, I dont think it is the way to become a good trader (personal opinion) as too much is left to chance and in my experience a lot of split second decision making. I still have a little dabble but only with tiny amounts. I find it much more profitable to play price action on 1hr and 4hr charts, and its a lot less stressfull.

We thats what i think anyway

Oh, by the way have you noticed how these spikes seem to be part of the integral makeup of chart patterns , spooky!!

Lyndon

Lyndon,

I understand what you are saying.... All I was trying to do is let people know of my bad experience so other people don't have to learn the hard way and they can learn from my mistakes.

Sorry if this has wound anybody up!!!!

I doubt you would be winding any one up so no appology needed. I hope people who think news trading is the fast route to millions do read your post (and the follow ups) and it does act as a warning.Oh, and i hope you didnt think my last post was meant to be any kind of lecture. I know exactly why you posted it and how frustrating it can be, i wanted to point out how common this is and how difficult it is to do anything about it, the last post is what i personally believe is going on behind the scenes but there again that is just my opinion and i may be wrong.

Aaaanyway, did you take a look at Darkstars thread, thats the best explanation I have found, I was looking for answers because i got stung a few months ago. I think he is spot on with what he says but like i say i still think theres more to it and none of us knows the whole picture. I know its not exactly what happened to you but its stuff well worth knowing.

By the way are you a news trader or are you like me, dabble a bit. I would love to figure this news thing but till I do its 50p per pip for me.

Lyndon

Eyevoltage

Cant speak for other brokers but e*trade & IG Index dont do them

Lyndon

Lyndonn,

I am like you... I am predominantly a breakout trader, but if the opportunity is there then I would trade the news also.

I don't think there is away to trade the news with a spreadbetting platform. I think to get the speed of execution we would need to go with a broker... what are you thoughts

I dont really have anything structured at the moment, like i said i am still trying out different methods with very small amounts. i took 18 pips off the FOMC today on EUR-USD but that wasnt using any kind of system so i dont class it as a victory.In the past Ive tried straddling and got whipsawed out, jumping on the spike as it moved and got slipped to sh*t. I am looking a types of hedging but I cant get to grips with it. I normally look on the news trading thread from about 60 minutes before but the stuff on there usually goes over my head any way.

Sorry I should have mentioned I use the IG trading platform for placing trades and the IG mobile on the move but for charting i use MeteTrader 4 through FXDD and i am developing a 1hour system which seems to work, it wont help with the news but its good for spotting reversals.

Oops i just previewed this post and i didnt really answer your question. If you have a trawl round the forums you will see that it seems as though most of the Forex brokers are just as bad. Its that whipsaw, if it wasnt for that we could all make a fortune.

Lyndon

Interesting thread(s)...

About different firms a lot of them the ones mentioned are in some way connected to the London Capital Group (Etrade, CapSpreads, DealingDesk etc) so they will be very similar in their dealings because the back office and dealing are generally done by the same people from the same offices - I spoke with them about setting one up a while back and that was the impression I was given - the main differences are contact details etc.

Anyway... Forex (and other) trading through a SB firm is good for the most part but there are issues that have occurred in my experience...

...Picture this "spreads of 1 & instant execution" (no mention of any names) a dream for any trader...
then you start making consistent money - your account is limited...
the instruments you were successful with are now
"not available for internet trading"...
wait it gets better... your account gets set to manual execution...
and better than than... quotes as a result of manual execution come back upto 2 mins later AND upto 6 pips away from the actual market price at that time!!!...
but you still make some money so they stop you from trading...
they don't tell you they've done this (earn interest on your cash etc)...
I don't notice this because I trade from various accounts (spread the eggs - diff baskets) - when I do notice you call them and they tell you that you are trading on incorrect prices - WHAT?... and I'm the ONLY ONE? - WHAT?... They're gonna fix the issue as its a price feed issue (Only for Me!!?)... should take 2-3 weeks... Lucky I got other baskets!...
Anyway... want to give them a fair chance...So I wait and wait... then decide to trade 1 month later... and it says I am not allowed to trade!...
Phone up... My account is closed! - WHAT? And noone told me!?!
Surprise surprise... I was making money... anyway needless to say the account is closed and my money is mine (they did return it promptly)
They are still happy to send me "junk emails"???!!!

I know someone with an account who made most of their money on a particular instrument - they've just experienced they cant trade that instrument online anymore!

Anyway... excuse the sarcasm... you can probably tell that this just happened recently so I'm still a little mad at them!... ok...
(sharp intake of air..... and..... exhale... ahhhhhh....)

I am still trading with a CapSpreads and they are really good for the most part - only issue is "price no longer valid" means you miss out on a lot of the volatile times as you simply wont get into (or out of) a trade... but thats the only issue... the trades I get into are fine... and the CGSL is a good idea and you can move the SL to a more manageable level as your risk appetite dictates...

CMC are good - I have traded with them from the start (and still do)originally CFDs until I discovered they did SB too, and someone mentioned above about auto rollover of positions... that is brilliant - you can take a truly long term view without worrying about expiries! They have instant execution too, spreads are reasonable and they are open 24 hours and have a chat system built into the software which helps rectify issues immediately if they arise.

I am not affiliated with any firms mentioned here at present and am only giving an account of my experiences, please do not take this as advice to open/close/avoid any firms - your experience might be different!

So what strategies are people using here to profit?

Kavs

Hi Micardo.
Thanks for the explanation, mate. That makes perfect sense, and prompts the question: "Now why didn't I think of that?"

Thanks again.
Cheers for now.