Hi Pan,

Good to hear from you hope things are going well.

I am not too familar with the UK market on the equities trading side of things. As I understand it however in the UK spreadbetting which is basically the same thing as trading stocks is tax free so a lot of traders I believe use spread betting firms instead of stock brokers.

Two popular firms that offer thins are CMC Markets and City Index. I know that a lot of people use them but I don't have any personal experience with them so I couldn't make a recommendation one way or the other.

If anyone does have experience with these or other firms I would appreciate it if you could help Pan out here.

Best Regards,
Dave

Hi Pan:

stocks/futures/forex?

For shares, I've used comdirect in the past (now selftrade) - £12.50 per half turn. It's a flat rate, irrespective of quantity, so perhaps a little expensive for smaller quantities of shares. If you're going to be a frequent trader (>100 trades per quarter) this falls to £6. No inactivity fees/admin charges. Also, it may be worth looking at their share dealing ISAs too - although they have a small quarterly admin charge.

For futures, ironically, I use IB; I find the low commision/margins to be ideal - although you could look at spreadbetting. Personally, I have no experience of that, though.

regards
the seeker

thank you very much for your help, i shall look at all those suggestions.
kind regards pan

Hey Pan,

I started with iii.co.uk, commisions at £10 per trade. I'm really not a fan of their service though and I'm looking to switch. It was between that and Selftrade - TD Waterhouse didn't look like the service I needed, and E*Trade has an annoying sign up process which more or less means you have to find a certified accountant or the Prime Minister to sign a copy of your passport. I have heard some good to average reviews of Barclays - their software is good but there are apparently some 'self servicing' on their behalf when it comes to the crunch of a trade.

I've noticed a lot to do with the difficulty in finding a good UK broker is the lack of quality and availability of Level 2 market depth. IIIs L2 program is Quotestream - which isn't interactive, and you can't trade from it, and it's £20 a month which represents the cheapest pretty much in the UK. But it's just horrible.

I'm not sure how often you want to trade or whatever, but it's just quite expensive unless you're frequent in that. Barclays have a good system though called BARX.

I'm planning on switching to Interactive Brokers once I get the £5500 required deposit - because their commisions are £6 and their market data is cheap. You also get a platform you can trade with, as well as interaction with some excellent free programs that I want to use - Ninja Trader and Quotetracker.

I've trialed the IB platform and it looks a bit messy for me, but like I said you can plug it into Ninja Trader (which also tracks your investments so you can learn about how you trade) and QuoteTracker for more detailed information.

IG markets for CFDs is good too.

Really depends on what you want to do. If you're long term it doesn't really matter as long as you get the stock right? If you're swing or intra-day I'd go for IB which also includes exposure to other markets. CFDs I'd go IB or IGmarkets.

As time goes by I am getting increasingly frustrated with the UK in terms of brokerage and information - and I'm looking to trade US stocks in a few months - IB will give me some good exposure to that market.

I haven't tried spread betting yet - but if you're new - I would definately not try this as a starting point! On demo accounts you can bet £70 to make a grand... but I just don't imagine that's gonna happen in real life lol.

Anyways, best of luck!

SW UK

PS Dave, great site.

thanks for that SW UK

im hooking up with ib brokers. its pretty involved so im going through their 'webinars' to try and get beyond how to turn the thing on. they also have a paper trading account set up so i can play around with it before i go diving off the high board.

before studying to trade,my own experience is with halifax brokers,google charting and stocks.

i think my history of buying stock in 'northern rock' speaks for itself. my entry decision was based around the well formed logic that 'its a bank, there's no way they're going down'. price falls. its a bank theres no way its going down...price continues to fall...you know the rest. i had alittle success with another stock but i put that done to luck.

kind regards and good luck with your own trading

pan

p.s dave, its nice to see you have a column for your friends. i need to get me some of them. im spending too much time listening to you go informedtradesDOTcom at the beginning of your videos.

keep on with the good work.

Hey Pan,

Regarding Northern Rock we have all been there, mine were always "dang if this thing was a good buy when I bought it at $50 then its a great buy now at $40"....you know the rest.;-)

Dave

Hey SW,

Great post man thanks for sharing and hope to see more of your insights in the future.

Best,
Dave

Hey again Pan and Dave,

Lol Northern Rock was a killer, I don't think even a consistant and experienced trader could have won that one. I think it's knowing that you've lost and cutting your losses early is a lesson best learned sooner rather than later though. I got into the game at the start of this year and have spent a lot of time in the past 5 months learning everything, which has been great. You've got a head start on most people that jump in so make the most of it!

I had the same thoughts re:NRK about RBS a few months ago, pre "Record results 10 billion pounds" profit, it looked great and I got in. It dropped 25% in a matter of days. It was my second trade and I lost a few hundred - but learned some important lessons. So stop losses are vital, and so is good analysis - and just cut the ties when you're losing, you don't want your money sitting for months hoping for a recovery while double baggers that you've done analysis on pass you by (ReneSOLA!).

Dave's vids have helped me a lot so my advice is to check those out and keep track - and develop a quick and efficient picking method. I've started to use ADX/Stochastics/MACD and EMAs - as well as keeping a keen eye on developing trends, patterns like Ws, wedges and H&s etc. There is a lot to learn, but just jump in and soak it all up you'll be much better for it! Since watching these vids, you can just pick a good chart in a few seconds, add it to a watchlist then do some of your own style analysis. I'm not too much into fundamentals anymore though.

As for trading in the UK, unless you've got some serious clout (over £10k) it looks really hard to day trade stocks. Initially I wanted to be a medium/long term investor - but I want the action lol so I've started to swing trade. It's a good time for it at the moment as most stocks are recovering from the start of the year and forming some definitive trends (ok, a lot are down.. but at least you know to avoid them).

The volume in UK stocks is pretty depressing, same with the availability of good info so just do your research and stay calm and it should be good in the hood. For us lot, it's good to keep an eye on what the US markets are doing - specifically, watch out for the hot sectors there - as the UK seems to lag behind by a few days/weeks on that front.

Dual listed stocks - which there aren't many of - are worth watching to you can get a feel for how the US affects the UK. Also, it's good to keep checking the movements of the FTSE - as stocks go up and down with that on an intra-day basis. For example, on Friday the FTSE rallied strong and if you check most stock charts - there was some serious bullish engulfing! Keep an eye on the relative strength stocks, as these moves are triggered within minutes of a FTSE run.

I wouldn't normally suggest trading off 52 week lows, but in the last week I've clocked 2 - ADM and BAY which have been 15% returns - it seems like a good time to bottom fish the top 200 on lows - so long as they're historical and Sup/Res lines back a few years.

I keep a TA page for UK stocks that I update every few days just to keep a journal of my analysis and some thoughts on trading in the UK. (like Dave says, a journal is important!) I might give out the address of the site.. I'm not sure.. maybe I can email you and you can let me know what you think about it..?

Anyways, keep to paper and get efficient - then just go for it!

Steve W

I love the way Dave says this. There's something about the way Americans say dot that makes it sound so much better than us Brits.