Is there a problem with Bid/Offer prices on the exchanges?

Every buy I have made today has been below the mid price so when they are displayed on stockwatch they display as sells.

Also they display a slightly different price to the price that I paid.

I know that they were my trades because of the quantities were not round numbers & the time is correct.

So if you are filling up your ISAs today watch out, the prices may not be reliable.

Ian it is not just MoneyAM.

Other sites are showing the same wrong prices so it is not your problem unless you are trading yourself of course.

apple,

It may have something to do with the way that we and the other site you mention work out whether a trade is a buy or a sell. As the trades are not marked as Buys or Sells during the transaction sites like us have to interpret this for ourselves.

We and many others use the following:

It should be noted that all trade declarations made by the market do not include a buy or sell indicator and therefore we have to derive this information ourselves. The policy we have adopted is based on the mid price of the stock at the time of the declaration. For example, a trade declared at a price that is higher than the mid price at the time of declaration would be put in the buy column, a trade lower than the mid price would be put in the sell column. A trade which matches the mid price would be considered unknown. Please also note that the market can delay declaration of the trades for up to an hour in which case we will not make any assumptions and place that trade in the 'unknown' column. Please also note that many investors are able to buy and sell within the spread and also users of level 2 systems will actually be buying at the perceived sell price, these trades might therefore appear to be wrongly categorised

Ian

apple, if you are buying at below the mid price then your broker is doing a good job of getting a good price for you. It doesn't mean that the prices are wrong. What it does mean is that you are buying when the market makers have a lot of shares to sell, i.e. others have been selling.

Sometimes trade prices are rounded in one system or the other which might account for any slight difference.

Ian,

All sites that I have looked at are showing my buys as sells.

This is expected because the price paid & the price shown are below the MID price.

However, I can't believe that I am getting such good prices every time, that is why I think that there may be something wrong with the data that the stock exchange is sending out.

None of the sites are actually showing the prices that I paid.

As I said, not the fault of MoneyAM, you can only display the data you are given.

This is just to caution others to be careful about the prices at the moment just in case the errors get bigger.

Kayak

The errors are slight but too big for rounding especially as 1 of them was a nice round number anyway so would not be rounded & has been changed to a non round number. This is the biggest error & is 2.6% out.

On the other hand, the errors could originate with my broker but hey I've got a contract note for each from their website so I'm happy.

I don't see how it can be them because various websites are showing different prices for my trades but not 2.6% different.

apple - they are showing your buys as sells, because when you bought someone else sold. - only one of the transactions gets recorded instead of 2.

The bid and offer are the MM prices. They are prices to "guide" your broker. If he can match buy & sells without going to the MM, then he will offer better prices. It is not an error, just how the market works.

Excuse me waiter, there is a problem here.
Your forgot to charge me for the wine and you have given me too much change.

Big problem.
Wish mine were like that!

little woman

That does not account for the difference in price between what I paid & the price displayed for my transactions on various websites.

All I am saying is that there may be a problem & people should be careful.

Perhaps the system that records the trades can't go to as many decimal places as your broker, and that why they are rounded up/down! Or perhaps your broker are not recording them correctly - becuase he is matching them to another clients trade (which is the one you see), and making a little extra in addition to his commission.