Decent results out today and a good divi 11p (not checked the cover yet though), has and should benefit from an up and down market.

Worth keeping an eye on perhaps, what do you think?

StockMarketWire.com
IG Group, a global leader in online trading, has completed the purchase of DailyFX, a leading global news and research portal, and its associated assets, from FXCM Inc for a total consideration of $40 million

StockMarketWire.com
IG Group says it continues to perform in line with expectations, after a strong second quarter.

Higher operating costs over the first half of the financial year, due primarily to the ongoing success in effective new client recruitment, have been offset by good revenue delivery

Wow... this looks cheap now at 560p.

Reuters - Britain's financial watchdog proposed tougher rules for retail financial spread betting products known as 'contracts for difference' (CFD) after finding that 82 percent of customers using them lost money.

"We have serious concerns that an increasing number of retail clients are trading in CFD products without an adequate understanding of the risks involved, and as a result can incur rapid, large and unexpected losses," the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) said on Tuesday. bit.ly/2gxTBcg

CFDs, including spread bets and rolling spot foreign exchange products, are agreements between two parties to exchange the difference between the opening price and closing price of a contract.

Shares in UK's IG Group (IGG.L), which holds 40 percent of the UK financial spread betting market by number of active primary accounts, fell 22 percent to 611 pence in early trade.

Shares in retail brokerage CMC Markets (CMCX.L) were down 29.9 percent at 128.17 pence.

Both IG Group and CMC Markets did not immediately comment when contacted by Reuters.

StockMarketWire.com
IG Group, a global leader in online trading, has noted an intended measure issued by BaFin, a supervisor of the company's activities in Germany, regarding the marketing, distribution and sale of CFDs to retail clients.

The BaFin announcement proposes that the marketing, distribution and sale of CFDs to retail clients in Germany can only be undertaken if the client is not at risk of losing more than the value of their account.

The company considers the BaFin proposal to be consistent with IG's recent introduction of Limited Risk Accounts, which guarantee that clients cannot incur losses in excess of the amount deposited in their account.

IG firmly believes in robust and proportionate regulatory oversight of the CFD sector in all the markets in which it operates. The company says it has operated and will continue to operate to the highest standards in the industry.

IG will carefully consider the full implications of the BaFin announcement and will be seeking to meet with BaFin before responding to the consultation, in accordance with the timeline provided of 20 January.

Re post #120, I thought that one of the attractions of Spread Betting and CFD's was that investors could trade on margin???

Barclays Capital today reaffirms its overweight investment rating on IG Group Holdings PLC (LON:IGG) and cut its price target to 612p (from 950p).

Without having to scroll back to find out, what was the reason for the dramatic drop in December please?

All briefly explained in post #119.

Thanks Harry.

A rather encouraging set of Interims this morning from IGG I think, also a major share purchase so I have dipped my toe in.

What do you think?

StockMarketWire.com
IG Group Holdings - a global leader in online trading - posts pre-tax profits of £105.2m for the six months to the end of November, 6.7% up on last time.

Net trading revenue rose by 14% to a record £244.9m while operating expenses were up 23%, with significant investment in effective marketing.

Profit after tax was £83.3 million, 9% ahead of the prior year (2016: £76.7 million), as the group's effective tax rate fell to 20.8% (2016: 22.2%).

Chief executive Peter Hetherington said: "This has been another good six months for the business, with record revenue, a new high in active client numbers and ongoing success in attracting and developing the next generation of traders.

"I am extremely proud of what we have achieved.

"The business once again proved the resilience of its operating model and its people, as it dealt exceptionally well with the short term volatility in the financial markets caused by two significant political events.

"IG is evolving and refining its offering to clients.

"Strategically, for some time, we have been shifting our emphasis to active financial trading and investing, deepening and broadening the relationship with our clients.

"In January, we received our licence from the FCA to offer an investments service to clients in the UK, in partnership with BlackRock, and intend to launch our smart portfolio ETF product in the UK in the near future.

"Also, as part of this evolution, we now offer clients our Limited Risk account, with an absolute guarantee that they can lose no more than their deposit - around half of the accounts in the UK are being opened on this basis.

"We have also taken the decision to no longer offer our Sprints binary product to new clients globally.

"We welcome the intentions of the FCA and other European regulators to improve consumer outcomes across the industry, and we believe that IG's Limited Risk account will play an important role in this.

"In delivering a sustainable business for over 40 years, IG has always sought, and will always seek, to operate to the highest regulatory standards.

"As the largest provider in the industry, IG is engaging with the consultation processes."

Seems pretty good Stan. I don't have any spare cash at the mo, so shan't be joining you. Still the regulatory cloud hanging over the industry, so could go either way, but could take forever for them to decide what to do.

Yes, I think that director buy swung it for me.

In and out for a respectable profit in 2 days, this one has possibilies I tell ya.

http://www.moneyam.com/action/news/showArticle?id=5487660 A Director taking a capital gain before ex-divi I assume.

RBC note today:
While our FY17E forecasts are broadly unchanged, we reduce our FY18E/19E EPS forecasts by 20%/12% mainly because we bring revenue/client down again, particularly in the UK (we still, however, forecast client growth, even in the UK). Thus, this remains a risk: should IG experience a contraction in the number of clients, the risk for our forecasts remains to the downside. It is our opinion that IG will be able to offset some of the anticipated revenue decline with cost reductions, and after growing underlying operating expenses by £32MM, or 13%, in FY17, we forecast underlying operating expenses to decrease by 5% in FY18, and then fall another 5% in FY19.

We do not believe that further analysing the pending regulatory change will provide any additional clarity. Unfortunately, this overhang will likely persist as (1) the final regulations are announced (spring 2017), (2) the regulations become effective (likely summer 2017), (3) IG reworks its product offering, and revenue and profits decline (H1/FY18), (4) financial performance stabilisation occurs (H2/FY18 at the earliest), (5) a financial recovery occurs (FY19 at the earliest). In addition, it is likely in our opinion that further adverse regulatory measures will be implemented in some of IG’s other operating geographies.

Price target increased 2% to 510p on higher valuation multiple. We still believe that a discount to IG’s historical forward trading multiple is warranted to reflect impaired earnings visibility and the potential for further adverse regulatory change. However, it is now our opinion that our FY18 forecasts are in the right ballpark (we still have low conviction in our FY19 forecasts), and thus we increase IG’s valuation multiple to 12x from 10x. We believe that a multiple between our previous valuation multiple (10x) and IG’s longer-term forward P/E multiple (15x) is now appropriate. We continue to incorporate surplus capital in our valuation.

The key reason we downgrade IG to Underperform is because our 510p price target is below the current share price, despite assigning IG a valuation multiple 20% higher than our previous multiple. We believe that the current share price has yet to fully reflect the numerous challenges the business will encounter. Our Underperform rating is based upon (i) regulation contagion to other geographies is likely, (ii) client contraction is possible, yet we do not forecast it, (iii) the dividend policy could be maintained, which would result in a dividend cut, and (iv) financial performance stabilisation and recovery could take longer than we envision.

Took advantage of this mornings dip to buy in again.

Advice required chartists, any comments on Igg at the mo?

Looks like a cross section of the digestive system, if that helps? ;o)