Spread Betting Experience - Ig Index

Here is the IG Index email promotion via advfn...

We are committed to giving you more. More markets, more trading tools, the best dealing Technology. We were the first to offer spread betting on shares in 1995. Now we cover over 7000 individual shares, plus indices, forex, commodities and more. Join IG Index for the ultimate spread betting service, where innovation comes as standard:

* Now you can trade directly from our free market-leading charts:

* View your positions and orders on any market

* DealThru trades are logged automatically on PureDeal

* Bring a new dimension to your charting

INNOVATION AS STANDARD DEALTHRU CHARTS

Remember that spread betting is a leveraged product and can result in losses that exceed your initial deposit. It may not be suitable for everyone, so please make sure that you fully understand the risks involved.

Review of IG Index Experience

The above is the email promotion of the Deal Thru charting with IG Index...without having to reference back to the dealing platform so regularly.

I am bringing this to your attention as my experience has been that this system can be unintentionally misleading...so here are a few points to note that have come to my notice during trading:

1 - Deal Thru charts may have a java script that unintentionally might delay the prices you see and execute against compared to the underlying platform. Whilst I cannot prove this, it would seem to be the only explanation in my experience to explain some of the price discrepancies I have noticed recently between Deal Thru and the underlying IG Platform on execution;

2 - Price cells are not filling in places on the charting software. To take just 1 example from today on the Dow 1 min (26/11/2008), there is no price data from 17.00-17.03 = 4 empty cells! That, for instance, means a standard MACD setting of 12,26,9 will contain a zero price value in one cell reference point for all of 26 price intervals until it is "cleaned" - in the meantime, metrics across the board on the IG Platform remain incorrect when price cells remain empty on their price feed;

3 - IGIndex (like most other counter parties) has of course a data feed disclaimer in its standard terms and conditions of Web site use - so, it's down to you to watch out for the above types of event that can seriously damage your pocketbook.

I have contacted IG Index on numerous occasions to discuss these items and the answer I get is a stonewalling: the charts are indicative only and IG's customer services say to refer to their T and Cs for the exact definitions of the agreement under which I use their site under...they take absolutely no responsibility for any losses sustained whilst using their or third party applications.

You would have thought that they might clean their data and be interested in checking out any delays in their Java scripts. Apparently not.

You have been warned ;-)