This thread was originally created in the Traders room by Sonofagun, he has given me his kind permission to copy it over to here for you all to read and to add any of your experiences.
If we all come together we have the power to change things.
I also recommend to those who haven't subscribed to gain access to the Traders room, to think carefully about doing so as there is a wealth of information in there, including trading tips, tactics, etc, it's very busy and well worth the money in my opinion.

do you work for d43

First thing this morning I went short ANL (not exactly a low volume stock) and put in a limit buy. Checked the current position a while later only to find the stock had dropped well below the limit price, but the limit not carried out. Watched for a while and watched the price creap back up towards the limit price, and still nothing. So I cancelled the limit & bought at market.

What is the point of Limit orders if they don't carry them out!

must admit i have had that happen to me,ive been with them for abt 3 years cfds 1st and now s/b, and like a lot of others yes i have had probs,i was taken off the auto matching system long ago,so now everything i do goes through a dealer but it has changed the way i trade i used to do prob 70/80 trades aday scalping away now i trade prob 20 trades 10 round trips but in a lot bigger amounts.ive learnt to work with them rather than aginst them.but i would say the following ,i dont think there is such a thing as a perfect company belive me it was d4free after all that forced the likes of city/ig into the real world by tighting the spreads that that havd been happily ripping us off for years,i now trade tax fee commision free,
i sit in an office with guys who trade direct into the liffe market they can run up fees of 300/400 quid a day and still be flat,they cant belive i pay no fees,so thats the other side of the coin.
also ive found there no point getting irate with these people rember they are pure order fillers theres ntg in it for them,they just fill our orders ive had more joy being nice than having ago ,ive had orders filled at better rates by just enquiring why a fill took so long,i have sat on the other side of the fence for 14 years trading in the city and belive me irate customers always got the worse fills.
anyway you have probably lost the will to live reading this i suppose all i amtrying to say is i really dont think the grass is greener anywere else

I have copied this over from the Traders Room thread about CMC. If anyone else wants to come can they email me: mike@moneyam.com. Your chance to find out how spread betting companies especially CMC work.


Mike

Date is Saturday 18th October at 12noon to be held at CMC offices at 66 Prescot Street, London E1 8HG.

Brian Griffin (Chief Dealer) and Jayne Banks (Communications Officer) will both be present to answer your questions.

Those attending:

Axdpc
Bullshare
KeithB
MLeung.
Mo-money
Tofur


So with thanks to all those who have posted on here, I have created a list of questions as a guide to the points raised, I have included some users comments to get the message across. If your comment is not directly quoted I hope that the ones I have used fairly reflect your concerns.

1) MarketMaker Software

Becoming increasingly unreliable at peak times - coincidence or what?
Frequently hangs and locks up

2) Charting Package
Inaccurate signals, candlesticks, bars, and crossovers.

3) Telephone calls

Attitude on the phone by some of your dealers/staff to perfectly reasonable
requests/questions

Been with CMC 2 days... New customer....however not happy already, sorry CMC it's just not up to scratch today...Phone lines were not being answered after 5 mins hanging on...later they were just engaged, i.e no queue either...

Promise to answer the phone within 10 rings.

4) Green Tickets

"A confirmed order to me is when you get a green ticket-why then when you have cancelled an order several times & never got a green ticket- do some go through & some not? Selective after the event or what?

5) Freeze ups

Freeze ups on order tickets just as major moves are upon us. Do you put curbs in place if the markets start moving

6)Slow quotes

my main gripe with cmc is slow fills on stocks i play alot and silly requotes and they can be very cunning with the requotes

spw price was 345.5 and the requote was 355.75 i took it thinking it was .25p higher only to discover it was 10.25p higher i checked the trades tape and at no time had a fill even close to 355.75 been carried out that,please stop giving me silly requots 10-15p away from the current price

Honour the screen quote.

You can tell once your order is placed that they just wait to see how it's looking before confirming - some would call this stacking the odds!

In the last 20 trades I have done, 18 of them were held for as much as 60 seconds ( even if there is plenty of stock on level 2 to fill), then re-quoted with the price moving the wrong way. Yet they are never slow when its moving in their favour they fill in a shot."

I'm suffering like everyone else and my profits this week are only about 75% of what they would have been without these antics - can I claim a record for 10 minutes for a requote.

quotes are taking up to 3 minutes and their price is no longer always dependent on the order book even when volume present.

"I don't think the size of bet is necessarily always the issue - my typical bet is 5 a point, and I still had a yellow box once for several minutes! I am particularly intrigued by the fact that, apparently, the 'Cancel order' button can be shown when, according to a dealer, the trade has already gone through!!"

They seem to be up to a new trick today - been trading GSK and 3 times in 2 minuites I hit the button to sell at the quoted price of 187 and each time the fill was held and then requote at 1185 when the level 2 price had never changed. Eventually got out at 1186 then the Bid on L2 was still 1187. On a fast stock this is an impossible platform to trade.

"I believe CMC need to ensure that the dealing guide is NOT silent on such important issues as 20 second quote delays or whether a stop is triggered on the bid or offer - their platform does not accept "stop-bid" or "stop-offer" instructions. That, for instance, means they have absolute discretion in both these areas which, sadly, is open to abuse. That cannot be right.

7)Does a clients' profitability affect the quotes

"Do CMC requote and change the rules if a user is constantly making money/profits"

8) Bet size and requotes

Do CMC hold back making a quote if a user is putting on a sizable bet and if so what are the sizes.

Some examples

" I carried out a little experiment and the result was expected. Try betting small amounts (1-10pp) and the orders goes through. Now try larger size bets (10-50pp) and sit back and watch the computer freeze up, requotes, the usual tricks. Now try (100-200), lol, you may as well not bother."

"I have the same problems as most here,had a another trader sat here with me last friday,had his account on one screen mine on the other, both went for a mks short,he got almost instant fill and mine took a lot longer,on this occassion it was ok as mks isnt a fast mover and i still got the price,but if it had been on something like gsk or rbs etc i would have almost certainly been requoted as the price would have moved as they took so long,"

"if wanting a large position I often fill it with a few small bets when I know they'll not fill the big one. Once had a dealer immediately come online and tell me I was taking advantage of the system. It has been obvious to me for some time that computers automatically fill small trade sizes and big ones get referred."


9) Why dont CMC display the size they quote in, on the screen in the first place.

"If CMC were an honest company then they would display the size that they are willing to trade beside each EPIC in their software.

10) Account statements and balances are often wrong
"
"My positions are showing the same as previous days, my overnight positions have disappeared, winning ones of course!"

11) Conflicts of interest

Between CMC business , CMC clients and CMC Staff

a) How CMC generate their income and how CMC staff are paid.

If cmc are not charging commission how do you think they make their profits especially if they are not fully hedging your trades in the markets
the market?

b) What are the common interests between CMC and clients?

c)Do you hedge all positions if you don't then are you indirectly competing against the users themselves.

d)Are dealers allowed to trade their own accounts and give quotes to clients on the same stocks.

12) Spread movement

However, we have all had examples where d4f take an extra bit on the spread when there is volume in the market. I would like to see this practice ceased or at least clarified.

Evening spreads & quotes are a joke & make trading then impossible-do your staff just want the night off?

13) Disappearing filled orders.

This has only happened to me once and to be fair the price I dealt at I knew to be an absolute bargain and not actually available in the market due to the 5% enforced auction rule but I feel it wrong that the order is simply removed from the blotter. A quick chat message would be reasonable pointing out why the order was not going to be honoured.

14) Chat Window

a) Had a chat window open the other day saying a dealer wanted to talk to me...
to say "Boo" !! Is that a professional system?

I had that yesterday on my s/b account...it just said "boo".

b) Why bother to offer a toggle chat which you take too long to answer?

Took me about 4 hours to get an answer to a question via 'chat' the other day!

15) Service Agreement

How about drafting a detailed 'Service Practice Agreement' and present
this for discussion at the meeting and for inclusion in the 'Customer Agreements'? It can encompass solutions to all the problem you know but takes into account the increased risk outside market hours.


16) Incorrect Margin Calls

I have been margin called 7 times in the last 5 hrs, saying that I have equity of just gbp 500 odd. I have over 40% free margin, I have called three times and been told to ignore it, they are going out in error


17) After Hours Trading

More stocks please

My other gripe with CMC is the after hours spreads. I wish that these could be narrowed to make it possible to trade after hours like it was 15 months ago. Its very unfair that the spread widens at 8.00pm.


18) Stops

a) do you move the price quoted to take out stops

b) Is the stop activated on bid/offer or on nearest trade

I used to have a CMC account. I was trading the DOW, this was a couple of years back. The market had dropped for a number of days, very similar to recent events. Pre market opening was up. At open it moved up and I joined in on a long position with a long stop. The market turned and tanked down, passing my stop. I noticed that my trade was still open and tried to contact CMC. No answer. The trade was eventually done well below my stop. The market reversed and then went back up, continuing on for a 2 week rally of 600 pts.

I argued with CMC and they stated they were not obliged to operate the stops, best endeavours and all that. The trading platform refused to respond so I was unable to manually close, and they did not answer the phone.

c) Only allow a one point slippage on a stop.

19) How are the Indices calculated on CMC

CMC certainly skew the price on the FTSE, don't they. The index just surged to 4155 whilst the spread stuck at 4147/50.

20) Account Opening

I finally decided to fund (first thing this morning ) the account I set up a month ago and guess what, they can't let me have a pin number so I can actually use the account for a day. (Although after 2 phone calls, they say they will try and do it in a few hours, accept I won't be here!) Wish I'd know it'd take so long..... Looks like I'll finally get the info, and won't get to use it as I won't have access to the internet for the next few days when they finally send it to me!

Finally

Not forgetting there were also a number of people who were happy with CMC; this sums up some of their feelings.

"having read the above posts i may be the odd man out but i have used cmc for about a year and in that time i have never had a problem that has not got sorted, re dealers attitude, same again i may be the odd man out, but i have found the dealers fair and helpful, my attitude is treat them with the respect you expect to be treated by, in fact they are better than some others i have used, and no i dont have any connection with cmc, as most of you know me, this is my opinion of cmc"

have to agree with some of above points and disagree with others as my prevoius posting i am fairly happy i trade what i would call fairly large pos in lloyds and barc100/200 quid pip and on the whole am fairly happy with them but must admit fills are certainly taking longer than they used 2,but would love to know how sat goes
rgds good luck

Does anyone know how the meeting on Saturday 18th October went with CMC?

Here we are, I copied this over from the 'Traders room' for all to see, I hope Mike doesn't mind.

Bullshare - 21 Oct'03 - 14:38 - 289 of 300


Meeting Saturday 18th October

First of all thanks to all those who took time to come along on Saturday to CMC offices.

I am sure whatever has been detailed below, and mentioned on here by the others will still leave unanswered questions from users, if this is the case email helpdesk@deal4free.com. That is the place to get your questions answered direct!If you fail, to get a satisfactory answer always refer to their compliance dept.

For those who did not attend I hope you get a flavour of the discussions.

Out of interest, I myself have had an account with CMC, as I also have accounts with other Spread betters and have had cause to complain and like wise cause to congratulate. This goes for all the spread betting companies I have used!!!

This is a synopsis of over 2 hours of discussion.


1) Market Maker Software.

Yes, it has been unreliable . Version 5 fixed some issues and this has been addressed by new database changes and installations over the last couple of weeks. The spread betting and CFD platforms operate separately and have different databases/servers as well as back office systems. The system is being worked on over the next 4 weeks to resolve any further conflicts.

Although CMC admit failings in the system, users should also be aware that sometimes there own network/ISP connection can cause issues.

Any problems incurred are not down to capacity issues at CMC it is mainly database.

They admitted that unreliability was unacceptable and were working on it. They have a team of over 40 techies who look after their systems and develop new products

2) Charting package.

They say it is not good and is only a simple package. They will be adding occasional new features to it, but it is not part of their core business. Those wanting a more advanced system should really be looking to use a third party supplier.

Charts are based on CMCs prices and not the market prices, hence there will be conflicts on chart between high/lows etc compared with the underlying market..


3) Telephone calls.

There was quite a long discussion about this and one of the attendees pointed out particular problems he had with CMC and two individual dealers.

CMC said there was absolutely no excuse for rudeness by dealers on the phone. All dealers should give their name at the start of a conversation. If a user has a reason to complain phone Brian Griffin, Head Dealer, who would take the matter very seriously and deal with the matter. All calls are recorded so CMC can playback the conversation.

If a user does keep having issues with telephone calls maybe they should also tape conversations.


4) Green Tickets

No ticket should be held for more than 1 minute ( this point was debated at length and in users experience this was not the case, often much more than 1 minute).

If someone starts playing the system, the system might refer from an autoquote and pass it over to a dealer to handle (see below). An example would be someone wanting 7000 shares, when there is no volume available in the level 2 order book. A user tries to buy 7000 by pressing 1000 seven times!!!

Freezing tickets might also be a connection issue.

5) Freeze Ups

CMC does not put any trading curbs in place. In a fast moving market shear volume of trading requests in the underlying market coupled with slowness of Market Makers themselves to make prices or answer the phone. If SETS itself is moving very fast this will cause slowness in autoquotes and will also force constant requotes.


6) Slow Quotes:

This is obviously one of the main issues raised by users.

I have therefore broken down how CMC make prices to try and explain why some quotes are slow or why constant requotes occur.

Firstly CMC computers provide an electronic autoquote to a user on both Spreadbet and CFDs . Where the order or request exceeds certain levels then the system will automatically alert a Dealer who will then take over and create a manual quote.

So what are the levels where a requote will occur or when it is passed to a dealer.


a) SEAQ stocks - CMC have no real interests in trading SEAQ stocks. Brians opinion on SEAQ stocks is best left out of print!!

Because of liquidity issues and the way SEAQ stocks operate, via market makers, SEAQ stocks will be handled manually more often than SETS stocks.
If a request to spreadbet or CFD trade is made, the dealers will look at the size available by the best market makers quotes and will also take into account the most recent movement of other Market Makers. On SEAQ stocks, because of the liquidity issues CMC might hedge the position straight away.

b) SETS Stocks. CMC said it was vital for users who were active to have a level 2 pricing system. Why? well CMC base their prices on the level 2 system!!!

CMC will base their prices (both spread bets and CFDs) on the yellow strip where there is enough volume available. e.g if you are after 1000 shares(or equivalent spread bet) and there are 2000 available on the yellow strip(top quote) then the quote should stay valid. If you are after 5000 shares (or the equivalent spreadbet) then the system might refer the quote onto a dealer as it is larger than that available . The dealer will then look at the order book and try and find a position in the order book where your quantity would get filled. On large orders or spreadbet this could be someway down then book. All spread bets are based on the underlying CFD platform , so again anyone wanting a bet will have to follow the level 2 pricing.

This would answer the many issues raised about slow quotes or requotes. If a stock is moving fast and the yellow strip price and or quantity is constantly changing then CMC will keep requoting.



7) Does a clients profitably affect the quotes.

A categorical denial. It is in their interest for users to make money so they will trade more!

8) Bet size and requotes

Hopefully this was answered above in more detail

But, yes bet size will affect the quote, if the bet exceeds levels of stock available at the price on level 2 then a different price will be quoted. So someone with a 5 spreadbet might be at a different price to someone at 50 if there is a thin book, as perhaps would someone wanting 1000 shares against 10,000.

Requotes occur generally where the market is moving fast so CMC have to move their prices in line with the market or where size is an issue.

They also operate a queuing system so on an actively traded stock your request might have to wait for a previous request by a client to be passed through. So although you might see enough stock available on L2, there might be someone ahead of you trying to get a quote. This is why it might seem there is enough stock at L2 and you get requoted as they, as a company, have demand for more than the order book.

9) Why dont CMC display the size they quote in.

This is would be a logical approach, and in theory would resolve many issues on requotes and would create transparency. etc. CMC although understanding the request, felt that this was not currently possible because:

1) they base their prices on L2 order book which constantly changes.
2) They are not allowed to quote level 2 order book levels without charging exchange fees.

I think those attending felt that the excuse for not quoting was not totally valid !

10) Account statements

Yes, this has been an issue and hopefully addressed with the new back office they installed 2 weeks ago and with their new databases.

11) Conflicts of interest.

a)_CMC make their profits by

The spread differential
CMCs approach to hedging (see below).
40% of CMCs business is in the profitable Forex market, an area of business the company was originally founded on.
They pay staff salaries and no bonuses/commissions.

b) Common interest between CMC and Clients.

Just to recap that they want users to make a profit(as above)

c) Do you hedge all positions

No.

Natural hedging might occur internally. As an example: CMC might set a limit of 1000 worth of exposure on a spreadbet. So they might have 15,000 worth of long positions in XYZ and 14,500 of shorts giving a natural hedge with their clients, except for 500 which they will take on board at their own risk. Should the difference exceed say the 1000 they will go and hedge this difference in the markets. This hedge might be through the future or by buying/selling the underlying stock. The hedging risk level will be decided internally, in other words they will take view of where the market or the stock itself will go and hedge accordingly.

d) Can dealers trade. No.

12) Spread Movement:

The underlying spread on SETS stocks is based on the level 2 order book. This spread may move depending on order book itself.

On SEAQ stocks the spread will be based on liquity of stcck, stock available at yellow strip etc. CMC may weight one side of a quote more heavily and this will be partially caused by their own view of where the stock is going. On US stocks the reason for the spreads changes is liquidity issues.

13) Disappearing filled orders

A dealer should always ring/chat before canceling a trade. If this does not happen please complain to the Head Dealer and then Compliance if the issue is not resolved

14) Chat window.

There is no excuse for slowness in CMC answering Chat.

The BOO issue was due to the techies testing the chat system and instead of the Boo appearing on the CMC internal system as a test message it appeared on the external system.

15) Service Agreement

Good suggestion and one they will take on board and discuss further

16) Incorrect margin calls

Hopefully rectified now new back office and database systems put in place in the last 2 weeks

17) After Hours Trading

The number of stocks available is linked to the stocks with US ADRs.

After hours stock prices and spreads are based on these ADRs which inherently have wide spreads and can move fast.


18) Stops

a) Do you move the price to take out stops.

No

b) Is the stop activated on bid/offer or nearest trade.

It is based on the nearest trade that occurs not on prices asked.

Stops will sometimes appear to be slow to be filled as all stops are manually operated by a dealer and are not handled automatically. The Dealer will always wait for a price to trade rather than for the market to quote a price

Stops are not guaranteed unless you take out the guaranteed stop with them.

On gap downs or ups, again they have to go by the nearest traded price which could be someway away from where you have set it.

Removal of a stop is also a manual process by a Dealer hence sometimes slow to go from blue to white.

c) One point slippage

CMC said that they normally allow/suggest a stop 4% away from the current price

19) Indices

These are calculated purely on the Future (not the cash) less fair value. Fair value is constantly calculated and changes. Example given to us, the FTSE Future fair value was 11points.

FTSE 100 cash was at 4368, FTSE Future was trading at 4374 , fair value was 11 points so CMC mid price for their FTSE would have been 4363.

20) Account opening

Yes, they must improve the speed and easy of depositing/withdrawing .

E&OE

So basically CMC avoided most questions (not surprised at all as they are regulated by the FSA). I could never see them admitting that they knock out stops for their own personal gain (a rope and tree comes to mind) although I have to say that recently my fills have been a tad faster so who knows, all the effort that went into the meeting may have made a difference. The future will tell if CMC will listen to its customers, one thing is for certain is that we should all still keep recording on this thread all the problems that CMC give out to us on a regular basis, as we have the power to try and change things, as WE are their bread and butter.

Interesting article on CMC founder:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2095-867825,00.html