Seems like we have another spread bookie in the pot. The new spread betting service from Man Group Plc has just launched and can be accessed through this URL: http://www.manspreadtrading.com.
At the moment only phone dealing is available on the new manspreadtrading site - you call and they give you the quoted spread prices, dailies and all the other equity instrument contracts you could possibly think of. The people that have created this business include founding members of some of the well established Spread houses in town
Well we're see what Man come up with (Man operate the world's largest listed hedge fund just in case you came from the caves) in the coming months since their online spread betting platform will be launched at around November.
So how could Manspreadtrading conquer the spreads markets...? [and i'm sure they will try even if the market appears to have matured already]
Maybe by offering better than the market average spreads?
or maybe by offering better than the market average service?
or possibly by offering better than the market average on line tools?
The Name of Man Group (if that means any thing to you....)
Which leads to more than the market average number of markets that one can trade in (because of the other thing Man trades in)
an all round top broker (well if you believe the marketing material ....
However to start with Man Group will be paying paying interest on ALL cash balances. This is already great. Paying interest on cash balances may seem like a normal business practice but for many brokers they make up some excuse that they can only pay interest on account balances over a certain amount, say £1000
I'm currently using Capital Spreads and find them good. The only thing is they don't always offer some of the more unusual US stocks.
In any case, I'll keep you updated - competition is always a good thing and I'm looking forward to their online spread betting platform launch.
I've made some enquiries, and it seems that the top brass at Man Financial have once again issued an edict from on high, which their staff are now trying to implement, which will shaft some of their customers. This is what's happening, as I understand it (from the horses mouth);
Globally, Man have decided they don't want exposure to small caps on leveraged products, to they are increasing their margin requirements on small caps as follows;
Over $100m mkt cap - no change
$50-100m mkt cap - margins increase to 75%
Under $50m mkt cap - margins increase to 99.75%
These changes are taking place this Thursday 29 Feb 2007, for Man Spread Trading, and GNI.
So there is only a problem for anyone with leveraged products on stocks with a mkt cap under about £52m.
This is all the more galling because Man Spread Trading marketed their product focusing heavily on their ability to do small caps down to £6m on competitive margins! But I already have experience of how different parts of Man don't speak to each other, and the edicts from above are just handed down without any consideration at all for how it will affect their customers.
Having said all that, this is maybe a good time to review whether certain shares are suitable for Spread Betting at all. Certainly the gearing can be a killer, as I've experienced in the past. So always best to go easy on the sizing of the position when using Spread Bets - keep the gearing down to the minimum would be my advice.
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