cate

July 3

56 minutes ago, KoketsoIG said:

Hi @Premachandra and @cate,

Thank you for your posts.

Please note that the TV team is no longer recording these two segments. They will be replaced by other content.

Thanks,

KoketsoIG

Hi @KoketsoIG,

That's such a shame. 😞 But thanks for letting us know.

Cate

July 2

Hi @KoketsoIG,

I have the same question as @Premachandra! The Morning Call and Charting the Markets both seem to have disappeared. Do you know what's happening with them this week?

Many thanks,

Cate

June 14

13 hours ago, johnbosworth said:

Hi Cate, thank you for replying. I really don't understand that. Are you saying that when I place a buy I should set to Bid and vice versa? Seems to change the charts bars which is a bit worrying. John

Hi John,

I only meant that if you want to check what levels the price actually hit you need to set the chart to Bid to see if your stop was hit. Because if the Bid (which will be lower than the Mid that is currently displayed on your chart) hit the stop level then the stop will have been triggered. Similarly if you have a short position, you need to look at a chart of the Ask (which will be higher than the Mid) to see whether a sell stop will have been triggered. Does that make sense?

I always flip my chart to either the Bid or the Ask, depending which direction I'm trading, when deciding where to set my stop levels, if I'm trying to be precise - it gives a more accurate picture. But even with that precaution spreads (difference between Bid and Ask) can widen at times of high volatility/ low liquidity, so sometimes at a turning point a stop gets hit that's further from the mid than you might expect.

But it sounds as though Neueneuen has discovered that the level of your stop shouldn't have been hit, according to the Bid prices on the chart.

Hope it gets sorted out!

Cate

June 13

Hi John,

Just a thought, but it looks as though your chart is set to display the mid price. You really need to set it to show the Bid because if that hit your stop it would have triggered a sell of your position. But if the Bid didn't hit that level either, then I agree something's wrong.

Good luck,

Cate

June 13

9 hours ago, KoketsoIG said:

Dear @cate,

Thank you for your post. Please note that the 15% is part of our non-shares margin review. The margin on TRY pairs was set to 25% for new positions as of 25 May. These were recently decreased from 25% to 15%.

Thanks,

KoketsoIG

Thanks, @KoketsoIG. I'm only confused because when I wrote to the helpdesk on 6th June, they sent me a document called FX_TIERED_MARGIN_RETAIL which they said was a list of the new margin requirements that would come into effect on 11th June. It shows (Tier 1) EUR/TRY 5% and TRY/JPY 5%

I think they must have sent the wrong document. Could you give me a link to the place on the website that has an up to date table of margin requirements?

Best wishes,

Cate

June 12

3 hours ago, neueneuen said:

@cate, June 11 is behind us, Tier 1 margin for TRY pairs has been set at 15%, not 5%. Pity.

@neueneuen As I seem to keep saying on this topic - it's bizarre. Why publish a document showing the rate at 5% if they don't intend to stick to it?

@KoketsoIG do you know if this change to 15% for the TRY pairs is permanent, or if there's some temporary reason and it's going to settle down? The document the help desk sent me showed a published rate of 5% margin effective from 11th June.

Would really appreciate IG sorting this out. The rate used to be 7.5%, then went to 15%, then 25% and now again 15%. I've been trying to test out a trading strategy, but keep finding the margin isn't what I expect it to be and so I can't take the trade my system is telling me to.

Thanks,

Cate

June 6

@neueneuen I just wanted to let you know that I've finally managed to get my hands on a document from IG that lays out the proposed margin changes that come into effect on 11th June. It looks as though only about a dozen commods and the dollar basket will have their rates increase. The helpdesk also included a full table of FX rates and rather extraordinarily the TRY pairs are all showing a 5% margin for Tier 1. I can't quite believe it's true, given that at its best the rate was 7.5% before the current jump to 25%.

Waiting to see what actually happens on the 11th...

June 5

@neueneuen Absolutely! I do wonder if you're right and they're trying to stop us trading some of the pairs altogether.

June 5

Thanks so much, @neueneuen, I really appreciate all that. It seems a bit bizarre, doesn't it? I wish IG were a bit more upfront about it all. It's not very reassuring having to dig like this to try to find what's going on.

June 5

On 28/03/2024 at 06:09, KoketsoIG said:

Hi @cate and @neueneuen,

Apologies for any inconvenience caused. Please note that the base margins on all TRY pairs were increased due to Turkish local elections. This increase is for new positions only. They will revert to 7.5% next week. Again, apologies for any inconvenience and confusion. I hope this clears up any confusion.

All the best,

KoketsoIG

Hi @KoketsoIG and @neueneuen,

The TRY pairs have changed their margin requirement again without any warning. EUR/TRY now requires 25% margin. Do you know why this happened without any notification that a margin change was coming? Is it a permanent change this time?

I wish IG we're clearer about what's going on with margin changes. We've been told things will change on 11th June but no indication of what the changes will be. And this change in the TRY has come earlier than any changes were meant to happen.

I've included you @neueneuen in case you're still also trading the TRY pairs.

Best wishes,

Cate

May 28

I came on here to ask the same question as @alpen. I'll write to the helpdesk to check which of my positions are going to be affected, but I assume this means we're going to have to contact them before opening any trades in an asset we don't currently hold, between now and 11th June.

I mean I don't have a position in EUR/CAD at the moment but I might open one at some point in the next 10 days, not realising that the margin rate is about to change. Those of us who trade frequently and in quite a wide range of assets are going to find this a bit of a nightmare...

I'm a bit puzzled why the changes aren't been listed in advance the way they used to be.

I can see quite a bit of drama coming on 11th June!

Best wishes,

Cate

May 23

Thanks so much, @KoketsoIG! Much appreciated.

best wishes,

Cate

May 23

Realise I should probably have tagged someone from IG in this question - @MongiIG?

May 23

Hi,

There used to be a really useful weekly blog on this help forum that was called "Counting the Cost" and showed how many days interest would be payable each night on all the FX pairs. It was great for checking that you weren't going to be caught by a night that wasn't following the usual pattern of 3x on Wednesday but normal the rest of the week. (I remember when TRY positions had a 6x night suddenly, which would have been painful if you were in the wrong direction and not expecting it.)

But I can't find any of these blogs more recently than April. Have they stopped? I really hope not.

Thanks,

Cate

May 23

Thanks very much @KoketsoIG. That's very helpful.

Best wishes,

Cate

May 23

Hi,

A friend has just opened an IG account and I notice that his minimum order size is much less than mine. Is that something that new accounts get as a sort of training period, and if so how soon do they go back up to a larger size? I'm asking because I suggested he should place several trades to get used to the platform now, while he was still able to trade in these small sizes, but he assumed these were the normal order sizes and didn't know they would change. I don't want to mislead him.

Thanks very much,

Cate

April 10

Is there a central thread that IG is using for bug reporting now we have to use the new system? I really hate the design and for me it's so much worse than the old trading platform, but there are also actual bugs that need fixing. It would be good to have an official channel to report them when users find them.

March 28

Thanks very much, @KoketsoIG. That's much better than I thought it might be.

Best wishes,

Cate

March 27

1 hour ago, neueneuen said:

@cate, if you find an email with the subject "Your IG Statement - DD MMM YYYY" daily sent to you when you have open positions or trades, there, in the "FINANCIAL CURRENT OPEN POSITIONS" table you would be able to compare "Notional Value" to "Deposit Required" and confirm that Tier 1 margin requirement was 7.5% up until the end of last week at the very least.

Hi @neueneuen,

I'm so grateful for you commenting on this thread! And for the advice on where to find a record of what the margin percentage used to be.

So looking at my statement of the 20th March, I held a position in EUR/TRY and the notional value (in TRY) was 344,731.70 and the deposit required was 26,558.20 which means the margin was 7.5% of the notional, which explains why the margin requirement has now doubled. @KoketsoIG could you investigate this? There was no warning from IG that there was going to be a change to the margin requirement, and so I'm still worried about what would have happened to open positions when that change came in. Normally, when we're notified in advance that there's going to be a change, the requirement on open positions increases which is fine if we know that's coming and can make sure we have enough margin available.

Thanks again, @neueneuen!

Cate

March 27

3 hours ago, KoketsoIG said:

Hi @cate,

Please note that the margin requirement has not been changed, it has always been higher at 15% compared to the rest of the pairs. As @TheGuru12 mentioned, the pair has a higher margin as it is volatile and not as liquid as major pairs.

Thanks,

KoketsoIG

Hi @KoketsoIG,

Now I'm really puzzled! If the margin rate hasn't changed the only other reason for the margin required to have doubled would be if the old deal tickets used to be for a 0.5 contract. But I've just checked my transaction history, and the last position I closed in the EUR/TRY (a week ago) shows as -1, so a full mini contract. But the margin requirement was quite definitely six hundred and something pounds, half what the deal tickets are showing now.

I've also just investigated the TRY/JPY where I currently have three positions open. It shows as requiring a 15% margin too, like EUR/TRY, and when I open a deal ticket I discover that again the margin required is about double what it was when I opened the positions a couple of weeks ago. Because the notional is TRY10,000 for these contracts, each one is tiny, so I wouldn't have noticed a big change in my capital "available to deal" if the margin on each one had doubled, so unless there's some way of seeing how much margin each position is currently using I can't check whether that has doubled from when I opened them. (Is there some way of doing that?) But the margin required on the deal tickets has definitely changed in exactly the same way as the EUR/TRY .

If the margin rate hasn't changed in the last week, can you explain what's happened? The only other possible explanation is that previously the system was calculating the 15% margin incorrectly and now someone has noticed and corrected the code, but that seems unlikely. Can the tech team see into my past trades and be able to work out what happened? The reference for my last EUR/TRY trade was PP4VTGAY if that helps them to identify it.

I understand that the TRY is an "exotic" currency, and I'm not questioning why the rate should be set at 15%, I'm just worried about what the sudden change means about an instability in the system, and a hidden risk that I'm not aware of.

Thanks,

Cate

March 26

2 minutes ago, TheGuru12 said:

EUR/TRY would be an exotic pair and quite volatile at times so I imagine there's a higher margin requirement for erratic levels of liquidity.

Hi @TheGuru12,

Thanks for your comment. I think of EUR/MXN as fairly exotic too, and that's had a constant margin requirement for as long as I've traded it (a couple of years). Up to a few days ago they both had about the same requirement, which was already higher than more mainstream pairs like EUR/USD, and then suddenly without warning EUR/TRY jumped. Generally low liquidity just results in the spread blowing out - EUR/TRY jumps from about 120 pip spread to 700 or 800 in the approach to 10pm roll, but that's not unexpected.

If it's true that some currencies are liable to go from about 5% to 15% without warning it's a bit alarming, and it would be good to hear from IG which currencies that might apply to. What I'm worried about is what happens to open positions and to orders when the margin changes?

Cate

March 26

1 hour ago, cate said:

Maybe we should try tagging someone at IG like @KoketsoIG .

It doesn't seem to have recognised @KoketsoIG as a valid username. So I'm trying it again and also tagging @JamesIG. Strange, this time it seems happy with the name.

Thanks, Cate

March 26

Hi @WarickLewis,

Maybe we should try tagging someone at IG like @KoketsoIG . Fingers crossed we get an answer!

Cate

March 25

Hi,

Last time I traded EUR/TRY about a week ago, the margin required for one mini contract was about £660 but tonight I see it is £1.286. The contract size hasn't changed, so I'm assuming it must be the margin rate that has gone up. It's 15% now, but unfortunately I didn't notice what it used to be - I'm assuming it must have been about half that. Can I just check what would have happened if I'd left a limit order to trade EUR/TRY? I'm worried that I might have opened the order thinking I only needed £660 margin, and then suddenly it would have taken the new higher amount and I might not have had enough free margin in my account and ended up with a margin call. Is that what would have happened, or would the system have automatically cancelled my order when the margin requirement changed?

Thanks very much,

Cate

February 22

Thanks very much, @KoketsoIG. I hadn't discovered the drop down menus - it all makes much more sense now! It's odd about the E1 contracts - it must be a new change, because I'm in the UK and I currently hold some of the E1 positions that I opened a few weeks ago. Anyway, at least now I understand what's going on.

I'll try not to bother you with too many questions as I get used to the new platform!

Best wishes,

Cate

Profiles

Forums

Blogs

Events

Community Tutorials

Store

Posts posted by cate