HL Failed Share Trades - No Guarantees

fiscoking

Hi,

I've been share dealing though HL for a few years now. It's not the cheapest or the best but it is convenient.

When you attempt to buy or sell a share in a Plc via their share dealing service there's a 'Place a Deal' button and after that a window pops up with a timer on it. The pop up has the message '15 seconds to accept this price' and the timer counts down, after which if you haven't placed a trade by pressing the 'Accept' button the window closes.

https://ibb.co/hf7p835

I've noticed on at least 7 occasions that trades fail and you get another message to that effect. Image below. You don't have to leave it 14 seconds to fail either. Sometimes the failures are sequential, I've had 3 fail in a row. If you keep placing trades, you will eventually succeed but some trades are time critical and that raises the question; why the failures? I raised a complaint and asked someone to look into it.

https://ibb.co/chjJcpg

Correspondence has been going back and forwards for months and the conclusion is, sometimes the market moves quickly and HL (or their market maker) will end up out of pocket so the trade is declined. Which begs the question, why the timed window & message '15 seconds to accept this price', if it's only a best endeavour effort.

HL won't give me a clear answer. I don't think they know themselves. There's no reason to have it at all as far as I can see. It is quite misleading as it gives the impression the price will be honoured, when it may not be.

I think this is more of a website wording \ design issue, as for any trade to take place there has to be a buyer and seller. If the market moves quickly and there is no other counterparty to be found then the trade will not go through. All I can think of is that at some point in history they perhaps did guarantee trades but then they did away with that and forgot to update the website leaving the wording & timer in place.

Just an FYI.

Johnjdc

If the buy sell spread moves out of the money then no, they won't necessarily honour it. Fifteen seconds is probably just to ensure the book is regularly cleared.

If prices were genuinely always guaranteed for 15 seconds there'd be free money e.g. submitting large orders to buy and sell gilt funds 5 seconds before the inflation number come out and deciding which to go ahead with 10 seconds later.

thecleaner_2

Minor side point. Why do you keep referring to them as H&L?

wmb194

This has been true in my 25+ year experience with them*; my Googling is failing me but there are some terms somewhere (LSE?) that set out the situations when market makers are are allowed to cancel 15 second quotes. The key thing was the price moving more than a certain percentage between obtaining the quote and accepting it. It isn't HL's or any other brokers' fault.

Edit: *15 seconds quotes.

jimjames

You get the same 15 second window with iWeb but I've never had that fail to complete a trade. At only £5 a trade it's also cheaper than HL so you might want to look at them as an alternative.

Xbigman

I had this several times with Selftrade and once when I was with Halifax share dealing. It does seem to depend on what you are buying. Big liquid companies never seem to fail, or at least I never saw it.


Darren

fiscoking

thecleaner_2 said:

Minor side point. Why do you keep referring to them as H&L?

Peter Hargreaves and Stephen Lansdown, but the company name is just Hargreaves Lansdown so you're right. Post corrected.

fiscoking

I was trading a FTSE100 ETF with a market cap of 4.7 billion GBP. I doubt it was a liquidity issue. Wasn't trading at open or close either when volatility is higher.

I just wondered how prevalent these errors were. Seems to be a thing, at least with HL, and some other platforms. There's nothing in the HL terms on share dealing about this (order handling policy). There's a reference to a timed execution period within which you can accept a quote, but that's it. This is just one of those things you've got to know about, which is why I posted in case others are interested.

sevenhills

I bought a share with HL today, no problems, I have never had this issue.