Where can I find FTSE100 numbers by the tick?

guitarman001

As per title, does anybody know where I can find the FTSE100 data, tick by tick, for a specific day?

Thanks!

bowlhead99

Tick by tick? The constituents will have 1-2 thousand trades per hour, x 8.5 hours, x 100 constituents. So that's 1-2 million data points. If you think someone is going to have recorded every tick in real time and make it available to you for free a few days later, think again.

This is about your problem yesterday with a binary bet that you lost, right? Why don't you just ask your spreadbet provider to let you have the underlying data that they used to settle the bet? They settle all the bets against the underlying market data.

By contrast if you are trying to look for data on their site, the nearest you can get is a graph of what people were betting the end of day value would be, at a point in time, which does not prove anything about what the actual FTSE value was in a particular time window.

guitarman001

Correct on all counts!
Got it sorted - they showed me some screenshots - more complicated than I thought and I wont be trying it again!

bowlhead99

Binary betting on the ticks of an index in a tiny intraday window is a pure gamble on the random walk of some prices, rather than real 'investing'.

Even if the market thinks there's a 90% chance it will happen and 10% chance it won't , the house only lets you bet on it happening to make a return as if there was a 93% chance it would happen - a smaller reward for getting it right, than the market thinks you deserve. If you instead bet on it not happening, you only get paid out as if there was a 13% chance it won't - a smaller reward than the market thinks you deserve. The market maker in the middle takes the 5 or 6 points in between from all the players.

So, it's a costly game to play, even if you win at it. I've used spreadbets as a hedge against currency movements and share price movements (at index or individual company level) and sometimes to supplement an existing real position. Leveraged tax free returns can be useful as part of an overall investment strategy even after accounting for the transaction cost of them (i.e. the spread).

But incredibly short term binary bets are just like going to a casino table. A bit of fun, possible to win big, but just like the horses or the lottery, the odds are stacked against you.

I bought a few thousand pounds worth of IG Group shares at IPO which worked out well, though I no longer hold them - so feel free to close your account

gadgetmind

bowlhead99 wrote: »

I bought a few thousand pounds worth of IG Group shares at IPO which worked out well, though I no longer hold them - so feel free to close your account

My wife still holds IGG, and she likes the divis, so please keep the account open and keep betting!