The total deposit limit was an administrative tool that IG Index used to control the maximum deposit requirement that a trader could incur on his/her account. Previously, if you reached the total deposit limit on a Plus account you would not be able to open any new positions, even if there were sufficient funds in your account to cover the new deposits. By removing the total deposit limit we are increasing the flexibility of your account and giving you more control over your available funds and your existing and new positions.

How will my positions be affected?

This will have no impact on any open or new positions, and your deposit obligations remain exactly the same. The only difference is that now you will not be subject to an imposed total deposit limit.

Monitoring your deposit requirement

At all times, your account balance must be at least equal to the deposit required for your open positions, taking into account unrealised profits and losses. It is your responsibility to ensure that your account balance remains above the required level and we reserve the right to cut back or close any or all of your open positions or orders if your account balance ever falls below the required level. In this case, we make no commitment to contact you before closing your positions. Positions will be closed at the price prevailing at the time and, as such, you may suffer losses greater than the funds in your account.

Managing your account

As always, to cover potential adverse market movements and avoid being closed out of existing positions you can, at any point, add additional funds to your account or make use of risk management tools such as Stop Orders.

You can receive up to £250 cash back against realised net losses, during the first 10 days of your new spread betting account being opened; as long as you place a minimum of five opening bets during this time. This effectively means means that should you lose up to £250 during the promotional period, ETX Capital will credit your trading account up to this amount. The cash back is cumulative, and cannot exceed an aggregate of £250.00 per account.

Manoj Ladwa, senior trader of ETX Capital was quoted as saying ‘If any net losses are incurred during that period, they will be refunded up to £250,’ explained Mr Ladwa. ‘We believe this offers a better experience of trading than using a demo account.’ Additionally, ETX Capital is reducing the minimum stakes for a number of markets. ‘It is to allow new customers to try our services without risking too much capital,’ says Manoj Ladwa, senior trader.

Note: This is a good offer if you’re a new account holder and wish to give ETX Capital a try although the opening of an account shouldn’t just be based on free money or cash back… Spread betting companies don’t offer cash incentives for nothing – they do it because they know that most of the times they won’t need to honour them. Having said that ETX also hand out to new traders a free book entitled ‘The Beginner’s Guide to Financial Spread Betting’ which is written independently of ETX Capital and is a decent enough introduction to spread betting as a whole.

The derivatives and margin trading provider stated that this represents an increase of approximately 11% (10% on a constant currency basis). In addition, IG’s UK, Australian, European and Singaporean divisions, taken as a whole, which businesses made 90% of the Group’s revenues in the period, experienced good growth at 29% (26% on a constant currency basis).

Operating costs were held in line with management expectations. IG managed to achieve this growth against marked lower volatility in both the security and foreign exchange markets and new client accounts openings continued apace. Excluding Japan, new account openings across the Group totalled 14,900, compared with 14,300 a year earlier. Japan had 3,200 new accounts, down from 4,600 in the same fiscal 2009 quarter.

The equity rally further helped to boost client trade through much of 2009 although this rally showed signs of weakness in the first two months of this year. IG is still having difficulties getting its Japanese division back to growth levels with revenue at £5 million for the first three months, considerably down on the £10.8 million achieved in the corresponding three months in 2009. Since IG’s acquisition of a Japanese online foreign exchange platform in 2008, competition for the Japanese’s retail foreign exchange customers has intensified, forcing IG Group to cut its margins to attract customers. Having said that a company spokesman did point out that there are signs that volume and revenue in the divisions are recovering, with revenue for February being the highest seen since last October.

IG further cautioned that it ‘remains difficult to predict future trends in volatility or customer reaction to changing market and economic conditions,’ but the ’strong account opening and the continued development of the group’s offering leave the group well positioned for further growth.’

Martin Belsham, CEO at CityIndex stated that Nigel would play a key role in forging and delivering the company’s strategic goals.

Martin added ‘Having spent nearly ten very successful years with Blue Square and Rank Group, we are confident that he will bring significant value to our management team and contribute significantly to our business at what is an exciting time for the company.’

In turn Nigel stated that he was thrilled to be joining one of the leading retail trading service providers in the world.

He added, ‘This is a great opportunity I simply could not turn down. City Index is an industry leader and I’m delighted to be part of the team.’

Comments: Well, after writing off more than £90 million in losses in the years 2008/2009 as City Index struggled with bad debts in the middle of the credit crunch; Rose will definitely come in useful in this department!

Spread betting specialists Spreadex have recently expanded their coverage of AIM stocks by quoting an extra 300 small caps on their Spreadex website.

Spreadex will now effectively be trading small caps starting from a market capitalisation as low as £1 million with margin rates starting from 20%.

The St Albans-based company has made the move to support traders who like to speculate on share price movements of companies outside the FTSE 350 index.

Spokesman Andy MacKenzie was quoted saying: ‘Traditionally these types of companies have been very difficult for spread bettors to trade on as many firms do not offer spreads due to the illiquid nature of some of the stocks.’

‘When spreads can be obtained, often the amount of cash that an individual is required to pay upfront to place a trade can be prohibitive. We are trying to improve this situation for those who have an interest in the performance of these smaller firms.’

‘A long list of spreads on these smaller companies has been added to our existing share prices. However, if there are firms not listed who people wish to trade, we urge them to call our financial room on 08000 526 570 and we will do our best to accommodate their requests.’

Just to name some of the new companies now available to trade at Spreadex include: Timestrip, Angel Mining, Motive Television, Carlton Resources, Serabi Mining, Ariana Resources, Formjet and Beowulf Mining.

Multilateral Trading Facilities function as an alternate stock exchange venue for DMA traders. These venues can provide better prices than the primary exchanges and are growing in popularity, now accounting for up to 40% of a share’s overall liquidity.

USA-based BATS launched its European platform in London in 2008 and has grown considerably since having just overtaken the Turquoise exchange to take second place behind Chi-X, and can now pride itself of a 8.4% market share in FTSE 100 shares. Formerly, traders on IG Markets had additional liquidity already derived from Chi-X and Turquoise prices being accessible via IG Index’s unique Multi-Venue Technology but now they also have the ability to access BATS pricing on leading UK and European stocks. IG Markets already offers similar smart routing facilities to Chi-X through a connection established last November (2009).

What are the Benefits?

Put simply, this provides traders with more liquidity, improved prices on share CFDs, and greater stability during market volatility.

The technology works in the background, comparing prices across the major primary European exchanges such as the LSE and Euronext, plus the leading Multilateral Trading Facilities, matching the the narrowest market spread available on each stock. The pricing is then derived from the best bid and offer prices to be found in the underlying market.

The addition of BATS enables IG Markets to broaden search, now including the three Multilateral Trading Facilities that taken together account for almost 39% of FTSE 100 liquidity in January 2010, and so bring you greater access to the most beneficial prices and the tightest spreads.

Key Figures

- Record level of UK Financial Spread Betting (FSB) live accounts up 53% to 51,240 in 2009 (2008: 33,560)

- Record number of UK (FSB) account openings up 26% to 18,235 in 2009 (2008: 14,430)

- Record volume of UK FSB trades per month up 25% to 0.5m (2008: 0.4m)

- Total FSB client funds up 43% to £34.72m (2008: £24.22m)

- Foreign exchange client funds down 13% to £19.13m (2008: £22.01m)

- Signed five new White Label agreements including PartyGaming PLC

For the year ending December 2009, the company reported a pre-tax profit of £5.8 million compared to £10.9 in 2008. Revenue decreased 4% to £27.6 million from £28.9 million.

‘Everything so far looking good for this year. We have had a good start and we are confident of meeting those expectations,’ CEO Chapman said.

London Capital Group further announced that Chief Executive Frank Chapman intends to step down from his role taking up the position of non-executive vice chairman while Simon Denham will take the helm. The company stated that its is comfortable of meeting forward pretax profit analysts predictions of £6.5 this year, and revenues of £30 million.

The financial spread betting and trading company added that trading in 2010 has started well with all business divisions trading well mirroring more favourable market conditions and the increased client base which is boosting trading volumes. The company is also in discussions with a number of companies about its white-label service – which empowers potential partners to get into the market with minimal infrastructure costs under their own brand name, and expects another year of strong client gains. The company has reached a number of new white-label deals last years with some of the best being PartyGaming, Paddy Power and Tradefair (a division of Betfair).

The company further plans to launch a contracts for difference and Meta Trader platform in the second quarter of 2010 which would further complement the firm’s core broking, forex trading and spread betting offerings. However the planned rollout of the contracts for difference platform, coupled with increased regulatory capital requirements, has led to the waiving of the final dividend. The company stated that it has £10 million and last year had paid an interim dividend of 2.5 pence a share.

Comments: So as I long suspected lower interest rates aren’t good for LCG’s bottom line and the company has admitted that there was a cutback on rolling charge revenue on clients running positions. ‘On leveraged books, revenue at 7% (5%+2%) of net open positions in 2008 was considerably more profitable than in 2009 where only 2.5% was earned (0.5%+2%).’ However, on average 39% of total clients were active during the year and funds on account rose by 35% with average trades per day rising 14% to 23,975 (2008:20,967). This continued growth in client volumes should translate into growth in 2010 as LCG starts a fresh year with interest rates held constant throughout – this coupled with the Group’s new CFD and MetaTrader platforms, to be launched in the second quarter of 2010 should contribute positively to growth. In my book LCG remains a reasonable company which generated £6m profit in 12 months. Add to that as a blogger rightly pointed out, the company has £55m in clients cash (which in normal times would earn it some £2-2.5m pa in interest) and that this recession won’t last forever so that revenue stream should return and that management owns 40% of this company – I rate it a buy*.

* this is the author’s opinion and not a recommendation to buy.

HL Markets will offer investors access to UK and international shares as well as other assets including currency pairs, indices, commodities, interest rates, government bonds and metals. Investors will be able to place trades and orders online or over the telephone.

Comments: So another wealth manager joining the spread betting bandwagon. Hargreaves and IG Group are attractive companies but it does not automatically follow that they should be in bed together as they cater to very much different clients and investment philosophies. The risk here is biggest for Hargreaves Lansdown as it might be setting itself a booby trap. How long will it be before Hargreaves clients that were avid investors in simple Peps and Isas decide to dabble in something they don’t understand and lose a fortune? And isn’t it curious that Hargreaves Lansdown don’t like structured products but they are willing to take a financial ‘cut’ in derivatives and let people have a go at CFDs and spread betting?

The spread betting firm based in St Albans is offering its punters the possibility to earn time on two luxury Cessna Citation X jets, which are the world’s fastest civilian aircraft. This uniquely tailored service implies that Spreadex customers, once qualified for flight time, can fly to airfields that commercial aircraft can’t access, and at a schedule of their own choice.

Spreadex Marketing Communications Manager Andy MacKenzie said: ‘To reward our top customers for their loyal business we wanted to create a scheme which had that added ‘wow factor’ and we believe Private Jetmiles has just that.’

‘Whether it’s flying to Paris within 45 minutes on a business trip or taking the family on a summer holiday to the Mediterranean in under two hours, the scheme has fantastic appeal to those who take their spread betting seriously and presents an unparalleled travelling experience.’

Customers earn points every time they place a financial or sports spread bet and rather than being based on profits or losses on an account, the points are generated by a ‘bet value’.

As spread betting firms make their money from the ‘spreads’ they offer on financial or sports markets, basically the higher the stake size a customer places on given markets the more points they earn towards flight time.

Mr MacKenzie added: ‘This may be out of the reach of the smaller speculator, but we have made this extremely achievable for the professional, larger investor who uses spread betting as a hedging or alternative investment tool.’

‘In fact we have a number of customers who are close to qualifying for flight time just two months into the first six month qualifying period. Flying on these Cessna Citation X jets really is the way to travel and we’re sure this is going to prove extremely popular with our clients and their associates.’

‘Additionally, we are also looking at introducing loyalty schemes to reward our smaller staking clients, whose business we also appreciate greatly.” Visit www.spreadex.com/privatejetmiles to see full details on Spreadex Private Jetmiles and the specifications of the Cessna Citation X jets.’

Some of the new features include:

Stop and Limit Orders on Trade Tickets

Traders will now be able to specify stop and limit orders on the trade ticket at the time of placing a trade. Spread traders will also be able to amend their stop and limit orders from the ‘Open Positions’ window.

Split Screens

The split screen functionality provides better flexibility and control of one’s account. It allows traders to view their Open Positions, Trade History, Order Book and Account Transactions as well as make the market selections above, all in one instant or view any number of these combinations with the tear-off functionality.

Multiple Trade Tickets and Tear Off Functionality

Traders can now open as many different trade tickets as they need and follow market movements until they are ready to initiate a trade. Spread bettors can even create their own ‘pairs’ window by tearing off the trade tickets.

Cherry Pick

Should a client have more than one trade in the same contract he will now be able to select which one he wishes to close first.

Improved Navigation

The re-designed interface is intuitive which means it is easy to navigate around the Capital Spreads platform. Clients can credit their account and withdraw funds from ‘My Account’, also traders can access information such as the Squawk, Technical Analysis and Market Commentary in ‘Trading Tools’ and information on how to use the Capital Spreads trading platform and how to contact them can be viewed from the ‘Help’ section.

Demo Platform

The demo simulator platform functionality has been improved to make it more real-like and closer to the live trading platform. The demo account now comes with split screens, an auto balance reset function, and traders can even benefit from faster trading as the stake is now embedded in the trade ticket making it quicker to deal.