iii Interactive Investor Share Dealing

tradetime

I'd take it one step at a time, if you have been sold a stock and you are certain that the price is 10% away from the prices trading at that time then I would certainly query it with iii as first port of call. May I ask which stock it was and on what day you bought it?

veloo

my apologies, i have looked through my records and realise the difference is (£10-20) around 1-2% rather than 10-20%. i will go back and change my original post. i'm not a frequent trader and i don't have a lot of shares. this is the first time that i have put money into a shares ISA. i tend to be a value investor (if i may call myself so, and a newbie at that) and typically trade my whole (~5k) ISA amount in one go. i suppose that is why i found the difference huge enough to somewhat upset me.

i know, putting all my eggs together is not best, but i'm still learning... this way i find the commission less intrusive. perhaps moving to a broker with less commission should allow me to trade more often and put more shares in my basket. i will continue to look at alternatives.

it seems the iii share dealing site is playing up a bit now, and i'm getting frequent messages to call their customer services when i click on deal. just to take an example, i looked at NG which is on a downward curve. the spread shown to me is 540.00-541.50 when i click buy. when i click on dealing, i am given 541.918 buy quote!?! if i'm buying 1-2 shares, it is only pennies. when i buy almost a thousand, that difference becomes substantial for me. 15mins later, i am looking at the actual trades list showing 541p for all of the BUY/SELL trades within that two minute window.

i have experienced the reverse of above while selling. as i said, i don't know if this is typical of other brokers. perhaps all this is part of the learning experience, as i gain more confidence trading the markets and the market makers.

premierfella

If the actual trades list you are looking at is giving the (single) trade price, it might be worth looking at a source such as advfn.com which shows the bid/offer spread prices against those trades to make a more accurate comparison with the iii quotes.

The fact that iii was giving a 15 minute delayed indicative bid-offer spread of 1.5p appears to be slightly unusual for NG, which normally appears to trade at a 0.5-1p spread. This suggests you are looking at a time period at the very start of the trading day? IIRC iii (Halifax) is normally able to give a live quote slightly inside the spread rather than outside it - I don't recall ever hearing of them giving poor quotes on liquid stocks, although I believe there are one or two brokers that others have said tend to be able to give very marginally better quotes occasionally.

tradetime

veloo, everyone is new to everything at some point and has a learning curve to follow, asking questions speeds the process and there are plenty of people here who will happily share what they know.
All sorts of things can affect the actual price you pay, and the size of the spread, such as liquidity (average volumes) of the stock you are buying.
At the risk of "teaching you to suck eggs" so to speak it might be worth reviewing the role of iii (the broker) in your transaction. If nothing else because I saw something posted somewhere the other day that was factually incorrect. A normal broker does not buy your stock from you, or sell it to you since they do not hold stock, they merely act as a go between, thus there would be little advantage to them quoting inaccurate prices.
Also I trust you are not taking the price paid from the "My Holdings" page that says "Average Cost" as this includes the commissions and stamp duty, you need to look in "Trading History" for the "Executed Price" Even 1-2% from the last price seems a long way to me NG you mentioned has, for example, a shade over 2% range for the entire day (3.2% today, just to prove me wrong )

I only use them for an ISA and I trade that somewhat infrequently I have not studied the prices compared to the market. Also since I do not trade UK stocks that frequently I do not have a live LSE data feed. I do however have live feeds from various US markets, and when I have bought US stocks for my ISA I have been able to see the market bid and ask compared to theirs and I find them to be quite accurate.

veloo

premierfella wrote: »

The fact that iii was giving a 15 minute delayed indicative bid-offer spread of 1.5p appears to be slightly unusual for NG, which normally appears to trade at a 0.5-1p spread. This suggests you are looking at a time period at the very start of the trading day?

not early morning, this was just before i posted, sometime late afternoon, i think around 1530-1600ish? are these spreads 15min delayed? i thought i get real-time time spreads when i'm trading?

tradetime wrote: »

veloo, everyone is new to everything at some point and has a learning curve to follow, asking questions speeds the process and there are plenty of people here who will happily share what they know.
All sorts of things can affect the actual price you pay, and the size of the spread, such as liquidity (average volumes) of the stock you are buying.
At the risk of "teaching you to suck eggs" so to speak it might be worth reviewing the role of iii (the broker) in your transaction. If nothing else because I saw something posted somewhere the other day that was factually incorrect. A normal broker does not buy your stock from you, or sell it to you since they do not hold stock, they merely act as a go between, thus there would be little advantage to them quoting inaccurate prices.

thank you, i'm a very keen and appreciative learner. please i would even relearn how to suck eggs, as i discover things i am not aware of.

i am aware that iii is an execution-only broker, and the prices i am shown are gathered from various market makers. so, i guess the prices might not be iii quotes but from queried from elsewhere.

tradetime wrote: »

Also I trust you are not taking the price paid from the "My Holdings" page that says "Average Cost" as this includes the commissions and stamp duty, you need to look in "Trading History" for the "Executed Price" Even 1-2% from the last price seems a long way to me NG you mentioned has, for example, a shade over 2% range for the entire day (3.2% today, just to prove me wrong )

I only use them for an ISA and I trade that somewhat infrequently I have not studied the prices compared to the market. Also since I do not trade UK stocks that frequently I do not have a live LSE data feed. I do however have live feeds from various US markets, and when I have bought US stocks for my ISA I have been able to see the market bid and ask compared to theirs and I find them to be quite accurate.

the NG example i used above was a real-time quote, when i clicked on buy/dealing quote. yes, that is why i was upset as i missed that price i was after. i also missed a good price i was expecting, but never got dealt, when i sold another stock at a loss.

on another stock, i set up a trade plan to automatically buy at a specific price. today the price went down much below my limit and stayed there, subsequently went up closing higher than my price. but the automatic trade never happened. i wonder if they only buy if the entire bid/offer spread goes below my asking price?

shrewsaver

I use iii for my sharedealing, stocks & shares isa & SIPP and am really happy with them. I have a regular investment set up i.e. I trade a certain amount each month and it is a lot cheaper. I think its called the stockbuilder or something like that.

tradetime

veloo wrote: »

on another stock, i set up a trade plan to automatically buy at a specific price. today the price went down much below my limit and stayed there, subsequently went up closing higher than my price. but the automatic trade never happened. i wonder if they only buy if the entire bid/offer spread goes below my asking price?

The tradeplan is a limit order, which means you specify a price at which you are willing to buy or sell. In the case of a buy you will not be filled until the ask price drops to your limit or better for a sufficient time. Limit orders are filled on a first come first served basis in the order in which they were submitted, but they are lower priority than market orders. That is to say, any market orders that enter the market whilst your limit order is open will be filled first, and this may result in the stock price being pushed back up above your limit price without you being filled

tradetime

veloo wrote: »

just to take an example, i looked at NG which is on a downward curve. the spread shown to me is 540.00-541.50 when i click buy. when i click on dealing, i am given 541.918 buy quote!?! if i'm buying 1-2 shares, it is only pennies. when i buy almost a thousand, that difference becomes substantial for me. 15mins later, i am looking at the actual trades list showing 541p for all of the BUY/SELL trades within that two minute window.

In your above example 540 - 541.5 is the indicative price, which could also be referred to as an approximate price, since prices are constantly moving, bid / asks changing there are no guarantees you will be offered a price within that spread. In this instance you were offered a price 0.418p above the high end of the spread, the difference on 1000 shares would be £4.18. As to why no trades executed near that price I couldn't comment.

veloo

tradetime wrote: »

Limit orders are filled on a first come first served basis in the order in which they were submitted, but they are lower priority than market orders. That is to say, any market orders that enter the market whilst your limit order is open will be filled first

ah, that would explain why in one instance i was able to purchase at a price, when i had a limit to buy remaining unexecuted.

so, i guess, my strategy should be to set limits to buy/sell, and when my price comes up go right ahead and buy/sell if i get a chance. waiting for those lower priority limits to be executed, might mean that i miss the bus. i usually buy and hold, for the long term. but now i am trading short-term and find that timing my entry/exit is important to get me a good price. a full days spread is usually very wide to get my pricing right. hence why i don't use iii's portfoliobuilder, which shrewsaver mentions.

shrewsaver wrote: »

I use iii for my sharedealing, stocks & shares isa & SIPP and am really happy with them. I have a regular investment set up i.e. I trade a certain amount each month and it is a lot cheaper. I think its called the stockbuilder or something like that.

don't get me wrong, i am happy with their service. i particularly like that they don't have any small print charges hidden away. as a rule, i don't use anyone who put any charges in their small print sneakily. being open and upfront reflects on the rest of their business practices.

i looked at iii's PortfolioBuilder (i think you mean this) with a £1.50 commission, and i was very attracted, and the primary reason for me starting with iii and share isa. but i only used it once, and don't think i will use that again. i find i can get a better total price timing my trade right. the portfolio builder trades about once a week. most share prices have a very wide spread between their weekly highs and lows. it is very good value if you buy/sell small quantities of non-volatile shares.

but i need to reduce my total trading costs. commission costs (£20) eat into every trade. i have traded about half-dozen times now, which means my portfolio is reduced by ~1.2% in one month. so i'm looking at other providers. two have been mentioned in this thread, and i have appended my first post with a list. both the alternatives charge less than half the iii commission. if the broker is execution-only, does it matter who executes the trades? i'd like to know of other brokers people here use.

tradetime

For short term trading, with a limited amount of capital, I would probably look very closely at spreadbetting, it may not be suitable for everyone, but it is definitely something to consider.