IG Preventing Trading

[TTBP]

(10 March 2020)

After making 2 successive trades within the last 24 hours,  IG Singapore unilaterally decided I cannot place another trade through their trading application.

An email query went unanswered for hours. Attempts at calling their service hotline went into a voice-recording loop. This service standard is very poor and extremely disappointing. 

 

Edited March 10, 2020 by TTBP

[Guest SOAP IST OFF]

IG platform is disappointing! Can't amend stops and limits during circuit breaker. Even when the circuit breaker was released, IG kept preventing me from closing position! Lost a tonne of money because of your inefficient system, servers and above all else, the BS PHONE SUPPORT YOU SAY YOU PROVIDE!! The phone always hangs up automatically, and if by some shear miracle you get through, you are on an endless loop!  

[audio]

I regretfully experienced the same topic as mentioned by TTBP (IG Australia). My account says " You are currently restricted from opening  a new position. Taking into view my high deposit volume and low margin, positive equity I can not recognize any problem IG should have with my account. The helpdesk does not pick up the phone, after hours of calling them.  I'm flabbergasted! Now hoping the will answer my email soonest. 

 

Is there a member who can inform me what the reason could be?

 

Thanks.

[CharlotteIG]

34 minutes ago, audio said:

I regretfully experienced the same topic as mentioned by TTBP (IG Australia). My account says " You are currently restricted from opening  a new position. Taking into view my high deposit volume and low margin, positive equity I can not recognize any problem IG should have with my account. The helpdesk does not pick up the phone, after hours of calling them.  I'm flabbergasted! Now hoping the will answer my email soonest. 

 

Is there a member who can inform me what the reason could be?

 

Thanks.

With your account there's a different reason. I will get someone to pick up your email and get back to you as soon as possible. 

 

All the best 

[CharlotteIG]

4 hours ago, TTBP said:

(10 March 2020)

After making 2 successive trades within the last 24 hours,  IG Singapore unilaterally decided I cannot place another trade through their trading application.

An email query went unanswered for hours. Attempts at calling their service hotline went into a voice-recording loop. This service standard is very poor and extremely disappointing. 

 

We are currently experiencing high volumes of calls due to increased volatility on the markets.

We will be able to see any trade attempts on our side so do, if you're able to, give us a call and wait for the help desk to pick up as they will be able to assist. 

[dmedin]

8 minutes ago, CharlotteIG said:

With your account there's a different reason

Mysterious ...

Can you see what everyone is doing?

[CharlotteIG]

1 hour ago, dmedin said:

Mysterious ...

Can you see what everyone is doing?

This is linked to your accounts so we're able to see if your account's open/ closed. In this case I was able to give a more account specific answer. 

[1810]

been trying to place an order all day without success. keep getting off quotes message.

[Guest Andrew P]

IG always has the same issues when the markets get volatile. I heve seen this behaviour several times, the website either goes down or they adjust the level of margin required to in my opinion discourage trading.

Remember a lot of spread betting companies only place your trade on the markets if you are a regular winner otherwise they accept the risk of the trade themselves as the majority of traders loose money and they simply keep your stake. So when the markets are going one way only and fast they dont want the trade.

Shame really as IG have a good website and information but i got frustrated with this behaviour some time ago and most of my trades are not on leverage any more i fund them fully with a broker and guess what, i dont have these issues at all and i have mainly winning trades.

[dmedin]

11 hours ago, Guest Andrew P said:

IG always has the same issues when the markets get volatile. I heve seen this behaviour several times, the website either goes down or they adjust the level of margin required to in my opinion discourage trading.

Remember a lot of spread betting companies only place your trade on the markets if you are a regular winner otherwise they accept the risk of the trade themselves as the majority of traders loose money and they simply keep your stake. So when the markets are going one way only and fast they dont want the trade.

Shame really as IG have a good website and information but i got frustrated with this behaviour some time ago and most of my trades are not on leverage any more i fund them fully with a broker and guess what, i dont have these issues at all and i have mainly winning trades.

 

Apparently they only make fees from the spreads and other admin fees, if that is true then surely they want as many people trading with them as possible.

[nit2wynit]

2 minutes ago, dmedin said:

Apparently they only make fees from the spreads and other admin fees, if that is true then surely they want as many people trading with them as possible.

There are millionaires trading in here....When they make 100k, where does that money come from?

Ironically, IG also has Risk Management.  As they make money from the 76% of Retail Punters who lose, they must also pay out to the 24% that Win!

[Caseynotes]

14 minutes ago, nit2wynit said:

There are millionaires trading in here....When they make 100k, where does that money come from?

Parallel hedging which they must also make a profit on. 

[CharlotteIG]

12 hours ago, Guest Andrew P said:

IG always has the same issues when the markets get volatile. I heve seen this behaviour several times, the website either goes down or they adjust the level of margin required to in my opinion discourage trading.

Remember a lot of spread betting companies only place your trade on the markets if you are a regular winner otherwise they accept the risk of the trade themselves as the majority of traders loose money and they simply keep your stake. So when the markets are going one way only and fast they dont want the trade.

Shame really as IG have a good website and information but i got frustrated with this behaviour some time ago and most of my trades are not on leverage any more i fund them fully with a broker and guess what, i dont have these issues at all and i have mainly winning trades.

If you were to trade on our non-leveraged account you would not receive the restrictions unless the underlying market didn't have the prices you wanted to buy/ sell at. 

We don't operate like some traders that we want clients to lose. Which is why when traders say we've manipulate the price it doesn't make sense when that's not how we make money. We make money from the spread and hedge to cover clients trades that don't match off with each other. The changes to dealing on the platform can be explained by clicking here.

[CharlotteIG]

1 hour ago, nit2wynit said:

As they make money from the 76% of Retail Punters who lose, they must also pay out to the 24% that Win!

 

1 minute ago, CharlotteIG said:

If you were to trade on our non-leveraged account you would not receive the restrictions unless the underlying market didn't have the prices you wanted to buy/ sell at. 

We don't operate like some traders that we want clients to lose. Which is why when traders say we've manipulate the price it doesn't make sense when that's not how we make money. We make money from the spread and hedge to cover clients trades that don't match off with each other. The changes to dealing on the platform can be explained by clicking here.

 

 

[dmedin]

IG doesn't make money from clients losing, clients feed off each other (IG matches them up). 

But if you can't be matched up with another trader then you need to be hedged against, hence the need to restrict trading.  Okay.  But that doesn't explain losing charts etc.

[CharlotteIG]

37 minutes ago, dmedin said:

IG doesn't make money from clients losing, clients feed off each other (IG matches them up). 

But if you can't be matched up with another trader then you need to be hedged against, hence the need to restrict trading.  Okay.  But that doesn't explain losing charts etc.

Yes so if 60% of clients are long and 40% short we will have to go and hedge long to cover that 20%. 

The lose of charts was our error and we can only apologise for the disruption it's caused to traders. Our technical team are still dealing with this.

I know @dmedin has already seen the feed but if anyone have any suggestions on how we can be more transparent with clients in situations like this please do let me know in 

I'm going to send it to our client facing and development team so we can do more for our traders if something like this happens again. 

[nit2wynit]

4 minutes ago, CharlotteIG said:

 

 

 

Thank you for taking the time to re-post this to me Charlotte.  Maybe we're talking cross purposes?

Regardless of where a business claims to make it's money, ultimately it's from the punters who pay in to the service.  It's either from the Spread, Or Hedging, or re-investing, or whatever.  The main point being that if  (Hypothetically) 100% of Retail Traders Won Every Single Trade,  who pays them?  where does that money come from?  Therefore there is a Risk Management strategy in play to ensure IG doesn't lose out.  IG, like other retail businesses is a Profit making enterprise....If it was evident that the market was crashing this week, it's in everyone's interest to ensure huge losses don't occur.  I'm not suggesting IG is corrupt, but in the same way an Insurance Broker operates, IG must limit its own exposure to loss.

My statement is in direct reflection of the sentiment in the forums;   that this instance is not isolated.  It's raising eyebrows to say the least!
 

 

34 minutes ago, dmedin said:

IG doesn't make money from clients losing, clients feed off each other (IG matches them up). 

But if you can't be matched up with another trader then you need to be hedged against, hence the need to restrict trading.  Okay.  But that doesn't explain losing charts etc.

See above.   

 

[dmedin]

2 minutes ago, nit2wynit said:

The main point being that if  (Hypothetically) 100% of Retail Traders Won Every Single Trade,  who pays them?  where does that money come from?  Therefore there is a Risk Management strategy in play to ensure IG doesn't lose out.  IG, like other retail businesses is a Profit making enterprise....If it was evident that the market was crashing this week, it's in everyone's interest to ensure huge losses don't occur. 

 

What I would have expected them to do is let everyone take short positions and NOT hedge against them but take those orders and put them straight through to market, then we would all have profited.  Maybe they have to hedge no matter what, which would have meant them having to take up huge long positions into a rapidly declining market

Edited March 11, 2020 by dmedin

[nit2wynit]

3 minutes ago, dmedin said:

 

What I would have expected them to do is let everyone take short positions and NOT hedge against them but take those orders and put them straight through to market, then we would all have profited.  Maybe they have to hedge no matter what, which would have meant them having to take up huge long positions into a rapidly declining market

would have been nice, just the once.

[nit2wynit]

I stood to profit £3500 from Inovio Pharma drop!!  £25 risk!  Charts didn't work..........

[Caseynotes]

14 minutes ago, nit2wynit said:

Thank you for taking the time to re-post this to me Charlotte.  Maybe we're talking cross purposes?

Regardless of where a business claims to make it's money, ultimately it's from the punters who pay in to the service.  It's either from the Spread, Or Hedging, or re-investing, or whatever.  The main point being that if  (Hypothetically) 100% of Retail Traders Won Every Single Trade,  who pays them?  where does that money come from?  Therefore there is a Risk Management strategy in play to ensure IG doesn't lose out.  IG, like other retail businesses is a Profit making enterprise....If it was evident that the market was crashing this week, it's in everyone's interest to ensure huge losses don't occur.  I'm not suggesting IG is corrupt, but in the same way an Insurance Broker operates, IG must limit its own exposure to loss.

My statement is in direct reflection of the sentiment in the forums;   that this instance is not isolated.  It's raising eyebrows to say the least!
 

 

See above.   

 

I think I may have mentioned this before, same answer to the same question (repeated over and over), it's almost like some can't listen or just won't. They could of course try doing their own research but ... na.

If 100% of traders won every trade, impossible of course but ..., then the parallel hedge function would pay them and IG would still make a profit. If the market is solely one way and IG was unable to parallel hedge then IG would just close the book and take no more trades, we saw this routinely during the crypto bubble in the second half of 2017, people whinged about that too.  

Conspiracy theories are much more fun than rational answers though and best of all require absolutely no real effort so hey 😁

[Caseynotes]

31 minutes ago, dmedin said:

 

What I would have expected them to do is let everyone take short positions and NOT hedge against them but take those orders and put them straight through to market, then we would all have profited.  Maybe they have to hedge no matter what, which would have meant them having to take up huge long positions into a rapidly declining market

They're not hedging against them, they are hedging with them.

[nit2wynit]

Just now, Caseynotes said:

I think I may have mentioned this before, same answer to the same question (repeated over and over), it's almost like some can't listen or just won't. They could of course try doing their own research but ... na.

If 100% of traders won every trade, impossible of course but ..., then the parallel hedge function would pay them and IG would still make a profit. If the market is solely one way and IG was unable to parallel hedge then IG would just close the book and take no more trades, we saw this routinely during the crypto bubble in the second half of 2017, people whinged about that too.  

Conspiracy theories are much more fun than rational answers though and best of all require absolutely no real effort so hey 😁

Casey rears his ugly head yet again....you must have missed me in here pal

I did say 'I' wasn't suggestion corruption, or certainly Conspiracy.........you still don't see me as Devils advocate do you!  I play all sides.

However, to your point.......If all went Short!!!!! as a lot did, and they couldn't Hedge coz the whole world went Short, then Yeah! Close the books....OR is it possible?  Fabricate a Platform Problem?

The problem with assuming, is that those with faith in the system, always assume they are right!

Nice to catch up

[dmedin]

1 minute ago, Caseynotes said:

They're not hedging against them, they are hedging with them.

 

Come hedge, come hedge with me 🥳💃

[Caseynotes]

1 minute ago, nit2wynit said:

Casey rears his ugly head yet again....you must have missed me in here pal

I did say 'I' wasn't suggestion corruption, or certainly Conspiracy.........you still don't see me as Devils advocate do you!  I play all sides.

However, to your point.......If all went Short!!!!! as a lot did, and they couldn't Hedge coz the whole world went Short, then Yeah! Close the books....OR is it possible?  Fabricate a Platform Problem?

The problem with assuming, is that those with faith in the system, always assume they are right!

Nice to catch up

now I don't subscribe to conspiracy theories but here's my latest conspiracy theory ...,  yeah yeah.

As I said regarding the crypto bubble, when they couldn't hedge they just closed the book, simple, easier than fabricating a platform outage don't you think? why bother.

 

 

[nit2wynit]

4 minutes ago, Caseynotes said:

now I don't subscribe to conspiracy theories but here's my latest conspiracy theory ...,  yeah yeah.

As I said regarding the crypto bubble, when they couldn't hedge they just closed the book, simple, easier than fabricating a platform outage don't you think? why bother.

 

 

It's the Question marks that are the reason for questioning Casey....

[nit2wynit]

Inovio Halted again....IG or the Market?

 

[CharlotteIG]

22 minutes ago, nit2wynit said:

However, to your point.......If all went Short!!!!! as a lot did, and they couldn't Hedge coz the whole world went Short, then Yeah! Close the books....OR is it possible?  Fabricate a Platform Problem?

So if we have this example, say all of our clients went short (all of different sizes) we have an automated monitor that tells us we have to hedge. if 100% of clients were short, we would have to hedge all the exposure until we're no longer able to take on anymore orders. 

The way we make our money is through the spread. So someone trades 10 contracts on Wall st MAR-20 (contract size is $10). Say the underlying is a price of 24114.8 our price will be 24115. Meaning we make (10 x $10 x 0.2 = $20) from the client placing the trade. That's how we make our money. If we're no longer able to hedge into the market a certain way we will then, due to how our company operates, restrict the market. 

As @Caseynotes mentioned, and example would be when we had unborrowable/ unlongable blockers on Cryptos. 

[nit2wynit]

Just now, CharlotteIG said:

So if we have this example, say all of our clients went short (all of different sizes) we have an automated monitor that tells us we have to hedge. if 100% of clients were short, we would have to hedge all the exposure until we're no longer able to take on anymore orders. 

The way we make our money is through the spread. So someone trades 10 contracts on Wall st MAR-20 (contract size is $10). Say the underlying is a price of 24114.8 our price will be 24115. Meaning we make (10 x $10 x 0.2 = $20) from the client placing the trade. That's how we make our money. If we're no longer able to hedge into the market a certain way we will then, due to how our company operates, restrict the market. 

As @Caseynotes mentioned, and example would be when we had unborrowable/ unlongable blockers on Cryptos. 

Yes, Charlotte thank you.  

It seems I may have hjacked the thread........I'm very well aware (regardless of how) that all companies are here to make money........

In this forum we're simply talking about how often the retail Platform suffers at times of volatility....

However, I have experienced problems regardless of volatility......maybe the reason I recently did a Q&A with IG about how i find the platform, and any problems or improvements.....

Thanks.

[dmedin]

8 minutes ago, CharlotteIG said:

The way we make our money is through the spread. So someone trades 10 contracts on Wall st MAR-20 (contract size is $10). Say the underlying is a price of 24114.8 our price will be 24115. Meaning we make (10 x $10 x 0.2 = $20) from the client placing the trade.

I wonder if any of the professional clients have issues with the platform.

(The ones who get personalized service, like champagne .)

I suspect not.

[dmedin]