What is your recommended spreadbetting broker? (UK)

R

robindrew

Hi fellow traders,

Although I dipped my toes in the pond of spreadbetting over a decade ago now with fairly neutral results overall, I recently returned to leverage my programming skills by integrating with APIs and attempting to formulate an automated trading strategy.

I am based in the UK, and so far I have integrated with IG Index, FXCM, OANDA and looking to add City Index (Gain Capital) to my framework. My reasoning for integrating multiple providers is:

A) I intend to compare execution times, prices etc.. programmatically to see which appears to provide the best service.
B) Write a generic API across all these providers to simplify and standardize access for Java developers (I am a Java Architect!).

I wanted to get some opinions on which broker you would recommend - and more importantly WHY? For example FXCM allows you to spread bet micro lots, but IG Index has thousands of instruments including crypto currencies and shares. And do you have any brokers you would recommend are best avoided...

Many Thanks,

Robin
 
From your approach, it sounds like you'll be scalping or at least day-trading.

If so, surely you've also heard that spreadbetting very short-term is almost impossible to win at? But maybe your system has an edge to overcome this?
 
Well what I've heard is slightly different - many forex traders now favour spread betting platforms over traditional brokers because the spreads are comparable, trading more straight forward and any profits are tax free!

The key question any trader interested in comparing the two needs to answer is whether the commission + spread cost through a traditional broker are so much better that they counter the tax-free element. The spread is the key - with the spreads getting as low as 0.2 pips (occasionally) on EUR/USD I'm not sure how it's impossible to make money...

If someone has done a comparison I would greatly appreciate their insight, as I have only ever used spread-betting platforms.
 
It's been a while but the 2 best in my experience are IG and cmc , the spreads on others is huge in comparison , they're safe and like you say have the instruments , last time I looked city index was sort of twice the spread , literally twice the cost, if you want to make a profit that's key, far cheaper than both is to trade cfd's with interactive brokers who have a London office, who i believe charge same commission as for stocks (u.s.) which I think is a cent per trade, and have pretty good fx too.
 
Yeah I started off using IG Index and CMC markets about 9 years ago. Back then City Index and many other brokers had significantly worse spreads. These days there is so much competition that I think most of them have comparable spreads. I'll take a look at Interactive Brokers, see if they have an API and try and compare them with the others. I know IG Index does CFD trading too so I'll check out the differences with IB.
 
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