I use three different dealers - x-o, Idealing and First Direct. They all have pluses and minuses.
My favourite is Idealing because of their free proper dealing screen (their dashboard) but they are fairly dear - £10 a trade and £20 per year account charge.
First direct is useful if you are a Firstdirect current account holder because you can buy shares without having to transfer money from your current account first - was great when the footsie hit 3800!!! It also lets you close a sale before purchase. Disadvantage though is that they allow partial fills so if you set a price limit you can find they have partially filled with 1 share and charged you a £10.00 dealing charge! Completely ridiculous and no way of switching the partial fill function off. Also cannot set prices for longer than one day. Least favourite - only worth trading at market prices.
X-O is basic but good value - allows prices to be set for years ahead, can buy small quanatities to price average and gives you summative value of your shares including buying costs. My experience of their customer service has been good - I sent a payment to the wrong account number and my account was recredited ith 48 hours. As previous poster says - it is run by Jarvis and they are well established and LSE accredited so cash should be safe to £50,000 althouh EU rules will change that.
Using them loads now with no bother, setting a sop loss beyond 24 hrs can't be done from the account control panel, but apart from that it seems all good.
For the price these guys are great. Their customer service will reply very quickly, often within 10 minutes. I also had quite a major issue with them as on one occasion a system fault displayed an incorrect balance in my account preventing me from making a trade. They corrected this for me despite the fact the share had gone up quite substantially and gave me the share at the price I tried to buy at. This did take a bit of persuasion and a few emails but they came good in the end so credit to them.
Negatives:
Stop losses, for more than working day you need to set it then email to ask for it to be extended until cancelled, should be automated IMO
No trailing stops - I emailed them and they have said they will look into this. This would possibly be enough for me to go elsewhere as I feel it is a vital feature.
LOG IN ISSUE! - this is ongoing and more of an annoyance than anything else. It will nearly always redirect you after your first login attempt to a 'try again' page. The try again page works fine but surely they could've sorted this out by now?! I use OSX10.5.
Conclusion:
Overall I feel this is a secure and reliable service and exceptional value. They need to sort out these few ongoing issues and I feel placing a trailing stop loss option is essential but could possibly add to price of trade. I'd personally be happy to pay more.
Recommended.
I'll add you dont need to set stops and limits every day but i thinkthey last for 30 days,
they use nominee accounts
phone serviec good
platform is pretty basic and its not automated or pleasing to use especially comepared to tradefair but then again its a discount broker
so all in all very cheap and I recommend them, but i also recommend having several brokers, so grab an accounts with iii they charge £2 for stops and limits total £12 for trade unless in an ISA
I don't usually set stops but I have a figure on my trade diary which I stick too,
X-O have a "limit" option, which I've never had before, as far as I know, but what I want to know is; if I set a limit, when buying, of say, 50p a share, and when the market opens, that share is, say, 48p, will it attempt to buy them at the lower price, or will it wait until they rise to 50?
Thanks in advance
Im pretty sure a limit will buy at anything below 50 or below, its never happend to me, except the other day when a limit i cancelled kicked in buying AAZ at 65p !!
I only really use limits and stops on my spread beetting account
the same works with a stop if the market opens below your stop, you get the price below your stop eg stop 50p open price 48p thus your selling at 48p
good luck and if you need advice pop back on here
but make sure is a good share if its 50p
if your new to it try trading something a little less risky to get used to it all !:money:
If you trade everyday, that would in my book make you a frequent trader. Why don't you try a proper broker such as Interactive Brokers.
After my earlier complaint, I perservered and X-O started working. I never did get any more help from them though. I have now been using them for a year. Why are X-O not proper brokers? I have not heard of Interactive Brokers. I am not a Daytrader as I understood this to describe someone who bought and sold on the same day. I already have accounts with Barclays, TD Waterhouse, and iii. Barclays used to be my main account, but their service has been going downhill for several years, whilst their charges go up. so I did the research and Jarvis seemed the best value. Thanks for the advice
I'll add you dont need to set stops and limits every day but i thinkthey last for 30 days,
!:money:
Several people have said you need to set stops and limits every day.
Which is true?
Also, can you create watchlists?
I used to use Selftrade which was wonderful for all this but I gave up when it got so expensive for an ocasional trader which con-incided with me losing a fair bit of money on Lloyds shares. I may now buy into a few shares again so am interested in trading as cheaply as possible.
Over the weekend we made a couple of changes to the online dealing functionality.
You can now enter stop loss orders with an expiry date (rather than just good for the day).
Haven't tried it myself, though.
For watch lists I just set up a portfolio on moneyextra.com.
Replies
Do you know if x-o will allow stop loss limits to be placed in the near future?
Cheers
Andy
My favourite is Idealing because of their free proper dealing screen (their dashboard) but they are fairly dear - £10 a trade and £20 per year account charge.
First direct is useful if you are a Firstdirect current account holder because you can buy shares without having to transfer money from your current account first - was great when the footsie hit 3800!!! It also lets you close a sale before purchase. Disadvantage though is that they allow partial fills so if you set a price limit you can find they have partially filled with 1 share and charged you a £10.00 dealing charge! Completely ridiculous and no way of switching the partial fill function off. Also cannot set prices for longer than one day. Least favourite - only worth trading at market prices.
X-O is basic but good value - allows prices to be set for years ahead, can buy small quanatities to price average and gives you summative value of your shares including buying costs. My experience of their customer service has been good - I sent a payment to the wrong account number and my account was recredited ith 48 hours. As previous poster says - it is run by Jarvis and they are well established and LSE accredited so cash should be safe to £50,000 althouh EU rules will change that.
they use nominee accounts
phone serviec good
platform is pretty basic and its not automated or pleasing to use especially comepared to tradefair but then again its a discount broker
so all in all very cheap and I recommend them, but i also recommend having several brokers, so grab an accounts with iii they charge £2 for stops and limits total £12 for trade unless in an ISA
I don't usually set stops but I have a figure on my trade diary which I stick too,
Im pretty sure a limit will buy at anything below 50 or below, its never happend to me, except the other day when a limit i cancelled kicked in buying AAZ at 65p !!
I only really use limits and stops on my spread beetting account
the same works with a stop if the market opens below your stop, you get the price below your stop eg stop 50p open price 48p thus your selling at 48p
good luck and if you need advice pop back on here
but make sure is a good share if its 50p
if your new to it try trading something a little less risky to get used to it all !:money:
After my earlier complaint, I perservered and X-O started working. I never did get any more help from them though. I have now been using them for a year. Why are X-O not proper brokers? I have not heard of Interactive Brokers. I am not a Daytrader as I understood this to describe someone who bought and sold on the same day. I already have accounts with Barclays, TD Waterhouse, and iii. Barclays used to be my main account, but their service has been going downhill for several years, whilst their charges go up. so I did the research and Jarvis seemed the best value. Thanks for the advice
Which is true?
Also, can you create watchlists?
I used to use Selftrade which was wonderful for all this but I gave up when it got so expensive for an ocasional trader which con-incided with me losing a fair bit of money on Lloyds shares. I may now buy into a few shares again so am interested in trading as cheaply as possible.
Haven't tried it myself, though.
For watch lists I just set up a portfolio on moneyextra.com.
Many thanks