HeOfMuchDisgrunt

It could be that IG's Volatility offering is a "spot" price made up of a combination of the nearest two months VIX futures contracts which are both currently trading at a premium to the "cash" market. Note that spot products can be subject to a daily adjustment, usually a charge if in "contango" (later futures price higher than nearer month, partly to account for the interest you would earn on the money not required as margin as compared not earned if you had to buy the spot product outright paying in full) but sometimes it can be a credit if the market is in "backwardation", i.e. the later month trades lower in expectation of more supply (for commodities) or in the case of the VIX more calmness after a spike. Why the actual construction of the product isn't clarified in the "Info" tab on the order ticket is a mystery.

It would be highly unusual for the FCA to do a U-turn. They think they are "protecting" the little guy from the sharks, but this leads them to do ridiculous things e.g. with option margin whereby a retail investor gets charged the full futures margin on a short option position irrespective of how far out of the money it is and, even worse, gets charged the same margin again even on an opposite position which could not possibly lose at expiration if the first leg were losing. For example a roughly at-the-money Put sells for a premium of P and is margined at an initial M (plus there is daily variation margin if the trade goes in the wrong direction) . A conservative trader thinks the market is slowly grinding down and wants to sell a Put 10% below the market for a much smaller premium p, but is still margined for the full amount M, so his ROI is considerably less - this tempts him to take the arguably riskier position of selling the higher premium position instead. However, being a conservative trader he decides to play it safe by selling the out of the money put anyway, not minding if he ends up having to buy the underlying at the lower price, but he then figures to increase his potential return by also selling a 10% out-of-the-money call. He would normally not expect to have to fully margin both sides of the trade as it would be impossible to lose money on both legs at expiry and volatility would have to increase drastically for the premiums to rise enough on both legs to force him to close early in addition to posting variation margin on any daily losses. Yet he is dumb-founded to find that FCA rules require the full margin amount M on BOTH legs. Not only can he not double his ROI but if he gets a margin call on his account he may have to close positions at a loss due to the extra margin M, on the second option position not being available as margin for other positions that he would have preferred to keep open during some short-term turbulence..Thus the FCA can actually cause the retail punter in this scenario to lose money on a position that he would otherwise have likely profited from. To avoid being treated as stupid (cos you don't happen to have half a million quid on top of your years of amateur trading experience) many customers may inevitably end up trading with unregulated overseas brokers which isn't at all in any way even riskier for them now is it?

Yes you do (and deducted if you are short).. However, be aware that for tax purposes it is a capital addition or subtraction to your account not part of your annual dividend income allowance, but the interest costs and any daily carry charges can be off-set against profits - if you closed all your positions before the.end of the tax-year then replaced them with differently-dated contracts or went on holiday for a month your gains (or claimable losses) would just be your ending cash balance minus your starting balance, provided you haven't written any options expiring in the next tax-year, which would complicate things a bit..

You can certainly hedge like that if you are quick off the mark - sometimes the market is surprisingly slow to react. Occasionally it does something counter-intuitive like meme-stock AMC Entertainment did recently when it actually shot up on the news of a proposed rights issue! But do remember that a CFD replicates your position in the underlying so if you shorted the CFD pre-rights and held the position through to the ex-rights date then you would find a short position in the rights added to your account which you would have to buy back at some point in addition to closing your short. Hopefully you weren't thinking there was a structural anomaly whereby someone else would pay for your free lunch every time with no risk to you..

It would help make your point if you gave an actual ticker. For example if you were interested in a meme stock such as AMC Entertainments searching on AMC would also bring up AMC Networks and AMCIL Ltd then when you click on them the "Info" tab on the right has a section called "Codes" which shows the ticker, though. I'm guessing you would prefer the ticker to show on mouse-over. Personally I don't see why they can't have the option to add columns for info such as this along with whether the stock is "closing only", "unborrowable", "telephone trading only", etc. It's annoying to have to select each item in turn out of a search list and not know for two or three clicks whether they are suitable.

Aren't IG themselves the market-maker during these out-of-hours times, though? Should you be expected to account for the possibility that IG could drop their own bid price to zero, or double the offer price, causing massive margin calls and forcing lots of close-outs, probably at significant losses? What is actually a reasonable out-of-hours spread and how could you account for it in advance of trading? In fact there is a valid argument to say that the margin on these instruments should be based only on their prices during actual trading on exchanges and on the last closing price thereafter or perhaps the after-hours mid-price.

The problem is that whilst you are on "artificial" margin call caused by these out-of-hours spreads you cannot open any new positions..

@CharlotteIG I'd like to see more options tradeable on-line instead of just over the phone (FTSE 100 equity options, for instance) or at the very last be able to obtain guide prices online. Also a tick-box choice. to roll-over to the next month like you can with futures would be good, or how about an option to settle into the underlying futures instead of as cash. Can we have more commodity options too, please , such as LME copper? And to ask once again, can we please have the US "occasionals" presented in the same easy, logical format and from the same menu as your regular options?

What does it mean when it lists the "Margin Factors" for some of these Granite 3x shorts or longs then under the heading "Other" (info) it says "Non-Leveraged Only"? I read it to mean you pay 100% for a 3x leveraged position, but why list margin factors in that case?

A CFD simulates the underlying, otherwise no-one would take the other side of your trade. Did you honestly think going short on a 10-1 stock-split the day before would make you (and lose someone else) 90% of the pre-split price the next day?

Yeah it's annoying having to phone for prices.

But why does the link remain on the news feed if the post has been removed?

I don't understand why @IGCharlotte doesn't often reply when tagged, or why other representatives of IG don't bother to address issues raised on here.

If a client buys a DFB contract dated 2029, which most of them are, how is it legal and/or FCA compliant for IG to end the contract earlier by forcing clients to close prematurely even when their accounts are not on margin call? The premise of the trade is that IG takes the equivalent underlying position and funds it with the daily interest charges so why is it not able to hold the position open indefinitely?

@CharlotteIG I'll keep asking this question until it finally gets the courtesy of an answer. Why don't you lay out these options in the same intuitive format as the commodity, index and FX options already available on the platform? Also, why not list them under "OPT" with those others?