News Trading in the UK : how & who to trade with

Hi,

I'm relatively new to News Trading, and being based in the UK I've been trying out a few different spreadbetting companies to enable me to trade the news.
So far I have tried the following:

http://www.iii.co.uk - really unreliable connections, and slow to open/close positions
http://www.finspreads.com - same platform as iii, but much more reliable. Nothing too flashy but does the job OK
https://www.tdwaterhousecfds.co.uk - awful platform, and I couldn't get the charting tool to work at all, but got £150 free to trade with (cannot withdraw it though unfortunately). OK for box
https://www.barclaysstockbrokerscfds-fst.co.uk - same awful platform as TD Waterhouse, and charts still don't work, but they give £100 to trade with that can (allegedly) be withdrawn after 6 months (though yet to be confirmed...)
http://www.igindex.co.uk - definitely the slickest software of all listed, but too much slippage to be any good for spike trading

If anyone else has any experience of News Trading in the UK, I would love to hear of and learn from your experience. Also, I'm not sure spreadbetting is the most cost-effective way of trading currencies, but my funds are limited so that's what I'm doing for now. If you have a better way, please let me know.

Cheers,
Andy.

Hi there,

If its news spikes you want to trade, I don't think its going to work with spreadbetting, they are a bookmaker and often do all they can to screw you during the news. You will need a proper FX broker, rather than a bookie. I don't trade the spikes personally, I know many FX brokers don't fill orders well around news time.. I have heard many different opinions about different brokers for news spikes, best thing to do might be to experiment with different ones and see which works best for you.. What service are you using to get the numbers?

I'm generally using either IGindex or Finspreads spreadbetting accounts, and they both have built-in real time tick charts - the charting tools look identical on both but I'm not sure what company has written than part of the application.

I understand what you say about spreadbetting/bookies, but I have a friend making 2k a month using spreadbetting accounts, which I what got me started on FOREX.

What broker do you use?

I have traded news a while back and still do sometimes and I have tried a lot of brokers. if you want to trade the initial spike of news then no broker will consistently give u a fill. Back in the days oanda was excellent for news trading because of the delay of their feeds vs actual market so when people started to exploit the inneficiency the broker responded wit 20+ pip spreads and keeping those spreads for 2 to 5 mins. So my professional advice would be that if you have an account less than 30K usd then it will be very very hard if not impossible to find a broker that will enable you to trade news spikes without price or spread manipulation. If u have the 30k+ then you should be able to find a broker to set you up with currenex or fxall type of platform to route you straight to bank price feeds.Try to not trade news if you are under capitalised to get a proper bank price feed else you will just be throwing money away.goodluck.

I dont trade newsspikes.. I would be careful with IGIndex.. I really do not think they will give you the fills you want during the news.. If I am wrong, it would be good to know. I have only used them for medium term carry trades, and they are ok. I just read a lot of complaints about them from professional and newbie traders in the past regarding fills in general though, especially around the news. Though with that said.. most brokers dont fill well during the news and probably dont want you to trade then..

Is your friend trading news spikes with Spread Betting?

How is your friend makinhg £2k a month? News trading or technical trading?

No my friend is placing box trades with spreadbetting, and it's working out for him. Personally I'm interested in any forex trading system that works, no matter what it is.

He's news trading.

That said, I just read the 4hour MACD pdf, and that sounds like it's worth looking into further.

I like news trading, though I only trade the NFP live. Its especially nice when there is a big deviation in the numbers. Finspreads rang me today actually, because I hadn't traded with them for a while.

Hi Andy,
when I first started news trading around a year ago, I traded with IG Index. At first I tried straddling the market with not much success, IG usually filled me at the top of the spike and not let me out when a strong revision came in, which can happen quite often especially with NFP. I then went to trading the numbers with one of the companies that give autoclick software. This worked very well with IG until I had taken about 3K off them, then I stopped getting filled altogether. You have to remember that like PeterM said, IG might be the biggest in the UK but they are still bookmakers, which means that if you win, they lose and no bookmaker will stand for that for very long.
To have any success at getting filled you really need to be with a forex broker, but you must bear in mind that if they have a dealing desk then they are no better than a spreadbetting company. There are quite a few around that don't have a dealing desk which basically means your trade is just passed through them to the banks and large institutions and they make there money on the spread wheather you win or lose, so it is in there interest to fill you.
Talking about the spread, that is one of the biggest problems at the moment, some companies are going as far as a 30 pip spread a second or so before a major release, so you have to be very careful. I would say the average spread at the moment before a major release is around 10 to 12 pips I'm happy to pay that on a release that should pay 25 plus pips.

There can be big profits in news trading, but there are many pit falls. My advice is that you do your homework and until you really know what you are doing, stick to a demo account.

Good Luck

Dan

definately agree with you there.. most news traders fail like other forms of trading.. the minority that do so are disciplined and sometimes have bloomberg terminals

I made a small fortune trading the news for years up until the end of the year 2006.
What killed news trading was the coming onto the scene of all these unscrupulous autoclick providers. We all know the 3 major ones. To this day, I dont understand why they would give away an edge when they could have easily traded the news quietly themselves. It all comes down to one thing: Greed. They eventually shot themselves in the foot. Now they send emails on a daily basis to their newsletter subscribers trying to get them to subscribe to their trading the news service that no longer works.

How were you trading prior to autoclick trading? How much did you make?

Yeah.. Greed kills a lot of things. Most traders will lose, whenever a successful strategy becomes widely used, it will no longer be effective. I know a couple of folks with bloomberg terminals who trade the spikes very successfully though. I am not sure how long it will last.. Perhaps a while as most retail traders can't afford or don't want to pay for a bloomberg terminal. Last I heard it was around $1600 per month.

Peter,

I dont think the cost of bloomberg is the problem, its getting execution with the broker is the biggest hurdle to newstrading.

yeah, that is certainly a major hurdle..