Delta Index Review


Corporate History

DeltaIndex are a spread betting company based in Ireland and regulated by the Irish Financial regulator which is passported to the UK regulator as well. The company also operates across Europe and is gearing for international expansion through its CFD offering.

The company is privately owned and was founded in 2001 by Actuary Conor O'Neil and Technology Specialist, Michael O'Shea.

Board of Directors in the company includes Dermot O'Donoghue (Former Head of Allied Irish Banks Group Treasury) and Dr. Sean Baker (a co-founder of IONA Technologies).

What we say:

Minimum deposit at DeltaIndex is EUR 1000 and all trades at DeltaIndex are in Euro per point. Delta Index automatically place stop loss orders at 50% of the margin needed to enter a position. You can, however still change this level. Delta Index is open for trading from 7am to 9.15pm, Monday to Friday.

Interestingly Delta Index explicitly states that when you execute a trade with them Delta will immediately hedge the position in the underlying exchange thus eliminating any possibilities of conflicts of interest. What they do is to basically aggregate client positions and hedge them with the brokers with their gross profit amounting to the difference between the retail spread that clients pay and the wholesale spread that Delta pays.

I sometimes use Delta Index and generally have found them fair and above board. Occasionally, I've experienced problems with things such as changing stop loss orders on the trading system but they are always on phone and fix promptly.

What I like:

  1. Rarely experienced slippage on trades.
  2. Have recently introduced guaranteed stops on a number of indices, currencies and commodities.
  3. Customer support is very good. They are very responsive to e-mails and when I've spoken to them on the phone Delta have been very professional.

What I don't like:

  1. Delta Index have a limited range of markets; notably they don't cover all UK stocks.
  2. I have noticed that Delta Index's spreads are wider on most markets than other spread betting companies like Capital Spreads.
  3. Biggest disadvantage of DeltaIndex is that sometimes they are closed when some markets are open, so if you go long on GBP/Dollar for instance, the market could be swinging all over the place but Delta aren't open for you to get in or out of it. This applies particularly to currency spread betting but also to some commodities. In contrast IG's currency risk is only for the duration of the trade.

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