andysinclair

I don't like to hijack this thread, but IG clients have been mainly short for the past 6 months, and more than 2/3rds short since the S&P500 crossed 3000 back in October. As the market goes down clients go long and as the market goes up clients go short:

Equity markets stronger, USD mixed, Gold down, oil flat and cryptocurrencies weaker. IG Clients still short equities, long gold, long oil, and long cryptos:

I can send you the template if you want, you then just need to install the Add-in in order to use the formulas in the sheet for streaming prices. The Add-in is $10 a month: https://www.excelpricefeed.com Here's the current sheet:

Visualisation in Excel of current market situation: Built using https://www.excelpricefeed.com

Don't forget that hedge funds were conducting their own private polling on the day of the Brexit referendum, no doubt they are doing the same today: From: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-06-25/brexit-big-short-how-pollsters-helped-hedge-funds-beat-the-crash So maybe this move is in response to private polling?

There seem to be three possible scenarios, in descending order of likelihood (based on polling over the last few weeks): Conservative large majority: GBP neutral/small positive as this is already priced in with the move from the 1.20/22 lows Conservative small majority: GBP small negative Hung parliament: GBP large negative My gut feeling is that the polls will be proved wrong again (as far as predicted seats go) and we will either have a small Con majority or a hung parliament. My money is therefore on a small short GBPUSD position as my election night "gamble".

Stock markets sharply down and near intra-day lows on US/China trade deal "news". USD weaker and gold, not suprisingly, looking strong:

Thanks for posting these @Caseynotes I use my own dashboard which I have built in Excel with streaming prices from IG (using my Add-in). It gives me a quick visual overview of various markets (Excel data-bars are brilliant!), I can see that stocks are down, fx flat, oil down etc and how markets have moved comparatively. I can also see where markets are now compared to their high-low (range) today which I find quite useful.

Thought I would look at Bitcoin client sentiment due to the recent price volatility. In the chart below, for the past 2 months, the orange line is the price and the blue line is % IG clients with long positions: Towards the end of October Bitcoin moved up towards $10,000 and IG clients responded by decreasing long positions. Then as bitcoin has moved down through November an increasing number of clients have gone long. Again, we see the inverse effect, as the market moves higher traders go short and as the market moves lower traders go long. It appears that not many IG clients are trend followers! (FYI: @TrendFollower)

Just been looking at the IG Labs site: https://labs.ig.com/community and it is currently full of spam posts. Can somebody go through and delete them, it's currently unusable. Also, there has been talk of moving the Labs forum to here, any progress on that? Cheers, Andy

The iPhone app has been flaky for the last couple of hours, and the browser version not much better. There is a status page: https://status.ig.com/ which is reporting issues with logging in, no mention of the other problems.

I'm currently looking at how sentiment moves with various markets. Here's confirmation of how clients go "against" the market. The orange line is the S&P 500 over the past 2 months and the blue line is client short sentiment. As the market goes higher more clients go short, when the market drops more clients go long. Interesting to see that over the last few days clients have scaled back on short positions as new all time highs are made...

Very interesting idea. What software are you using to backtest it? I'm also keen to backtest it, I've built a crude system for backtesting using the IG Index API, I'm tempted to tweak it to test this idea! Will report back here with results if/when I get it up and running.

Very interesting analysis @DSchenk Quick question: How did you get the data from IG into the spreadsheet?

Ask yourself one question: if you had designed, built and deployed a "bot" which consistently made money would you: a: set up a business to manage other peoples money, build an infrastructure to keep track of positions, balances etc. then spend money on sales and marketing and above all ensure you comply with all relevant regulations regarding the running of such a business (i.e. very stringent if you are managing other peoples money). or b: keep it for yourself and trade your own money I know what I would do 😉

Hi, Not sure if you ever got this working, but you could use an Excel Add-in that I have built that enables you to easily download historic data, either by specifying a date range or number of points: More details here: https://www.excelpricefeed.com/userguide/historic-data-download-ig-index Hope this helps.

Saw this today: https://financefeeds.com/tech-issues-affect-ig-platforms-second-time-less-one-week/ Doesn't fill me with confidence to start trading again, I too would like to see a detailed response from IG.

It sounds like you need an automated scanner to find such opportunities. IG Index has an API which can be used to build applications, if you can define the "rules" which identify such opportunities then a system could be built which could be constantly monitoring various markets and alert you when your rules are met. I can't see how you could ever trade like this without some automated help.

The minimum amount (at least for my UK account) is £250, there are no additional costs: https://www.ig.com/uk/help-and-support/deposits-and-withdrawals/deposits/whats-the-minimum-maximum-that-i-can-deposit Each market has it's own minimum trade value, although it is quoted on a per point basis (i.e. 1 pence per point). You will need to look at the actual market, for example here is the S&P500: https://www.ig.com/uk/marketanalysis/ig-indices/us-spx-500 Click on Product Details and you will see this: Minimum size GBP 1Margin factor 5.0%Minimum stop distance 1Min guaranteed stop distance 3Slippage factor 50.0% Hope this helps!

I've built an Excel Add-in which connects to IG Index. It includes the ability to download historical price data from IG Index into an Excel spreadsheet: There are some instructions here: https://www.excelpricefeed.com/userguide/historic-data-download-ig-index Hope this helps, and do let me know if you have any questions or feedback. Cheers!

Here's some detail from the FCA website: https://content.govdelivery.com/accounts/UKFCA/bulletins/24f2808

Yes. It's the sell price if you have bought, and the buy price if you have sold. Try on a demo account and you will see exactly what prices are used.

You can check the status of the IG platform, web, mobile etc here: https://status.ig.com/ It is a confirmed problem with the Android app.

Thought I would post an updated spreadsheet, interesting to see IG clients (us!) now: More short: major indices More Long: GBPUSD and EURUSD Very long: Bitcoin and Ether

I've had similar issues over the last few days on the demo platform. IG support are aware (as of yesterday) and they said they are looking into it. Shame those profits aren't on a live account!