IG Trading Review: What You Need to Know About Spread Betting & CFDs

Account Types

IG offers a range of accounts, catering to different trading preferences:

1. Spread Betting & CFD Accounts: For leveraged trading across various markets, including forex, indices, commodities, and shares.
2. Share Dealing & ISA Accounts: Non-leveraged options designed for long-term investing, with ISA accounts offering tax-efficient investing up to £20,000 annually.
3. Smart Portfolios: Managed portfolios using iShares ETFs, tailored for passive, long-term investments.
4. Professional Accounts: Available to experienced traders meeting specific criteria, offering lower margin requirements but reduced investor protections​

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Deposit Requirements

The minimum deposit is typically £250 for card payments. While debit card, bank transfers, and PayPal are free, credit card deposits incur fees (0.5%-1%). Negative balance protection is included for retail accounts​

Platforms

IG no longer uses PureDeal. Instead, it offers:

• IG Trading Platform: A robust, browser-based platform with customizable tools.
• ProRealTime: Advanced charting tools, available for a fee.
• MetaTrader 4 (MT4): Popular among forex traders.
• Mobile Apps: Comprehensive apps for iOS and Android​.   These include all the options available on the web platform including the functionality to place stops, limits and working orders as well as the ability to check charts in a variety of timeframes and add indicators as required.

1. Customization: The IG platform is simple to use and very easy to configure. It allows you to build up a watchlist of the markets you wish to bet on. The watchlist shows you the real time prices being offered for buy, sell +/- on day…etc. Sometimes the price may not exactly match the underlying market, although in my experience IG are always pretty close. If you use quarterly bets the prices drift further away from the daily price as the spread increases to incorporate a financing charge. The additional spread or charge that IG adds to any trade is shown when you click on the deal button in the watchlist.
2. Accessibility: Finding your market on IG is very easy/fast using the IG search feature.
3. Particularities: IG have a unique feature allowing you to open multiple positions in different directions within the same market as long as you tick the so called ‘Force Open’ function on any new deal ticket that might affect an existing position. For instance IG will allow you to open a March short and a Sept long in the same instrument (CMC do not allow this). You can also do the same for a position which is the same. For instance you could place £5 a point going long in a March contract and £5 a point going short in a March position. To do this, you will have to make sure the ‘force open’ button is selected on the deal ticket.
4. Multilateral Trading Facilities: IG Index has also moved to incorporate a number of alternative execution venues or Multilateral Trading Facilities (MTFs) like Turquoise, BATs and Chi-X Europe into its trading platform as opposed to just the London Stock Exchange for the pricing of shares spread bets. This means that clients are not dependent on a single exchange for prices. This also means greater liquidity for IG’s clients and tighter spreads since they receive a more transparent service with the best possible prices. With up to 40% of shares now typically being traded away from the LSE, ensuring clients can also use prices from the likes of Chi-X and BATS Europe means that, in the vast majority of cases a more competitive trade can be delivered. This process is entirely seamless for spreadbets as the technology works behind the scenes to search out better prices and clients are presented with the best quote from all the underlying liquidity venues, with the firm simply adding a fixed mark-up to the bid-offer spread.
5. Unusual Markets: Currently you can spread bet on the average house price in Greater London and the UK. IG Index offers prices just two quarters ahead, compared with four originally, reason being that it is harder for IG to make a price for longer periods and they are not able to hedge the underlying risk. Another novelty market is the carbon market which measures carbon emissions and started trading as a result of the Kyoto Protocol in which signatory countries agreed to specific targets for cutting environmentally harmful emissions. The market is quoted 7am to 5pm with £2 a point being the minimum bet and margin being 150 times the stake. It is notable that carbon credits are directly related to the price of oil – as this increases companies will switch to cheaper (more polluting) alternatives and buy in the extra carbon credits.

Comparing some Popular Market Spreads at IG Trading

– UK Shares: 0.1% either side
– FTSE 100: 1 points
– Wall Street: 2 points

– EUR/USD: 1 points (min spread), typical spread is 2 points
– GBP/USD: 2 points (min spread), typical spread is 3 points
– EUR/GBP: 2 points (min spread), typical spread is 3 points
– USD/JPY: 1 points (min spread), typical spread is 3 points
– AUD/USD: 2 points (min spread), typical spread is 4 points
– USD/CHF: 2 points (min spread), typical spread is 4 points

IG Index offer 1 pip spreads in certain market conditions, however at other times they will widen the spread. However, this widening is capped to 3 times their typical spread (maximum) so should the underlying foreign exchange market spread happen to be wider than this the capping will apply. In most market conditions, the typical spread applies. This capping mechanism gives clients some peace of mind of knowing they will always be able to enter or exit a trade at an acceptable dealing quote.

Fees

• Trading Fees: Spreads, overnight financing, and optional guaranteed stops.
• Non-Trading Fees: A £12 inactivity fee applies after two years of inactivity. ISA and share dealing accounts have a £24 quarterly custody fee​

Rollovers

The daily rollover time is 8pm UK time, 2 hours earlier than most other firms. To check market opening times, one logged in, click on the down arrow which is on the right of the trade, and go down to ‘Get Info’. This will display the market opening and closing times.

Stops

Stop and limit orders are now based on the bid or offer of IG Index’s quotes (as opposed to the market price as they were in the past…).  Stop/limit orders and “force open” features allow multiple positions in the same market.

Education and Training

IG offers extensive educational resources:

• Webinars and seminars for beginners and advanced traders.
• A trading academy with tutorials and guides​.

Pros

• Widest Markets Coverage: IG Index makes prices in a huge range of indices, currencies, commodities as well as thousands of individual shares and other exotic bet-types – in fact IG quote some 10,000 different markets including ETFs, bonds and grey markets in new listings to the stock market when these happen. Only spread bet company that handles emerging markets (and not many others even handle iShare futures). Extensive pairs range.
• Access to Small Caps/AIM/Sectors: IG also offer lots of small caps and shares quoted on AIM (quote prices on nearly all UK stocks with a market capitalisation of over £10 million). Like CMC, IG Index also offer sector bets on UK shares which are useful to avoid the annoying predicament of believing in a group as a whole, yet trading just one stock that happens to underperform against its peers. These can be found on the dealing platform at Indices -> UK Sectors.
• IG’s fee structure includes competitive commission rates for various asset types. For example, UK shares are traded with a 0.10% commission, while U.S. shares have a commission of $0.02 per share. The minimum charge for share dealing is £8 for UK trades​.
  Regulation and Security: IG stands out for its robust regulatory framework, with licenses in multiple countries, including the U.K., U.S., Australia, Singapore, and more. This ensures a high level of security for user funds.
• Reasonable Spreads: Spreads on major shares can be as low as 0.1%, making it cost-effective for traders in high-volume stocks.
• Futures: They do lots of far months, e.g. now you can trade March, June, September (some spread betting companies don’t offer the September far month).
• Sophisticated web and mobile platforms. IG’s dealing screen is simple, very clear and easy to use/navigate. Trading interface is nice with key technical support information on many stocks. Overall, a great platform when it works the way it should… Platform works better on faster computers. Have recently introduced trailing stops which is a handy feature allowing you to lock in profits.
• Execution: Fills are usually quick compared to some other providers – I like this because it is just scary waiting to see if the ticket is going to come back, wondering if you have been filled or not…etc. For this reason i can’t use a platform that constantly leaves orders ‘hanging’.
• Guaranteed Stops Availability: Guaranteed stop losses are available at IGIndex on most markets (except binary bets and options). Minimum and maximum levels where a guaranteed stop loss can be placed depends on the market you are trading on, there is no set rule, the levels will be stated on a deal ticket when you selecting your stop level. No cost is incurred for moving a guaranteed stop, but you will pay a premium for the initial use of a guaranteed stop – this is factored in to the spread of the market. So, for instance, if you were short selling Rank Group and the sell price was 55.86 when you select a deal ticket to open the trade, and then select guaranteed stop, you will see that the extra spread incurred on the use of a guaranteed stop in this particular market is 0.169. So, in this example, as you are selling to open you would subtract the 0.169 from 55.86 to get your actual opening level of 55.691.
• Solid Commitment to improving their Platform: Many trading tools are included freely as part of the service. IG always seem to be improving things and offer plenty of widgets to help you trade – for instance text alerts allowing you to set a trigger when a share price hits a certain level so that you receive an SMS (or e-mail) as soon as your chosen level is hit (which comes in handy when you are away from your screen but still want to take advantage of opportunities as they arise) and DealThru charts allowing you to place trades directly by clicking on a chart and change orders such as stops and limits simply by dragging and dropping them without having to go back to the trading platform. i.e. place orders direct from the relevant price chart. I also note that IG Index show a ‘flag’ on the dealing screen (on IG it is a paperclip beside the quick chart symbol) for any relevant news regarding any companies/indices etc. on which I have an active spread bet which is also quite useful. Also, for instance when I’m using IG Advanced Charts I can set alarms on RSI, MACD and lines. When one gets triggered I get a “ping” to let me know it has/is triggering. Disadvantage is I only get 20 alarms but then you could always use third party software like ShareScope to screen charts for potential up and coming trades and update IG accordingly.
• Excellent Charting: IG Index’s clients stand to benefit from the functionality and features of a professional charting package, supplied as standard, and enjoy unprecedented facilities for analysing historic price data. IG currently have three chart levels – basic quick charts (for those who just want to view the recent price activity and do some basic analysis), advanced charts and (pro)realtime charts. IG’s ‘real time’ charts are provided by ProRealtime and does everything that a commercial technical analysis package does including backtesting. You could also get a light version free from the ProRealtime website (google it). ProRealTime must be the best free multi-chart platform on the net – in the free version you don’t get the intraday data – you would have to pay for that and IG Index are quite generous in providing it for free to clients who place at least two trades a month (otherwise it is £30). Basically you get 50 videos on everything from setting trend lines to multi indicator scans and easier than sharescope data mining plus back testing facility. Worldwide exchange coverage including forex, bonds and commodities. FTSE top 200 but no smallcaps. Included in the charting package are some 70 preset indicators all displayed in real-time with full customization with top movers, portfolios and lists, drawing capabilities and historical data. The site is owned by IT-finance. On IG you can even customise the display so as to open several charts and watchlists at the same time meaning you can check multiple charts and quickly identify trading opportunities. There’s 2 things missing from IG’s real time platform that would make it, IMHO, the best package by a mile. The first is volume with the appropriate volume indicators, and the second is a Level 2 plugin.
• Supplementary Tools: IG is now offering a useful tool; IG Chart Pattern Recognition (Autochartist) which can be used to scan thousands of stocks in real-time. IG’s Autochartist (available free of charge to clients) is an automated technical analysis tool that will scan your selected market for almost any pattern you would wish, either technical analysis or Fibonacci related. Basically the application consists of an automated pattern recognition tool that scans various markets on your behalf and can flag up when certain criteria are met. You can either run these scans on very short-term charts or you can set the application to analyse longer-term charts, say once a day to highlight any opportunities. Start with their settings and have a play. Use it to scan for patterns such as double tops, double bottoms, heads and shoulders…etc. Put your own patterns in and have even more fun.
• Fundamental Analysis: Equity fundamentals include overview of a stock with all related key financials. This includes consensus estimates, per-share data, valuation ratios, dividend-per-share, sales and profit estimates as well as recent news about the company, snapshot charts and a summary of the company’s structure and core businesses. You can also get up to five years’ financial data for each company, including revenue, income and EPS data, along with a broken-down cash flow history. All this is provided free to clients.
• Market Research: Independent experts ‘Trading Central’ supply technical commentaries on equity, index, fixed income, forex and commodities markets identifying trend and associated pivot points, as well as highlighting key support and resistance levels on each market. A detailed analysis of the foreign exchange (FX) markets and UK equities is also provided by Investors Intelligence. IG Index also makes available a Monday morning briefing note that lists all the UK and USA companies that are due to report in the week. The note also includes details of upcoming economic announcements.
• Social Interaction: Apart from the company’s analysts posting latest tweets about the markets as well as podcasts and videos, IG Index has recently also released a trading tool called Insight as an addition to its trading platform. Insight starts by bringing together news and market commentary for the different markets that can be traded with IG. This includes a Reuters newsfeed which can be filtered by market or region and pattern recognition charting software for those traders that use technical analysis to trade. The tools integrates live news and prices with a snapshot of open trades and watchlists in a neat setup. This tool also provides users with an aggregate perspective of what other IG clients are trading returning client sentiment and trading activity data. Individual client positions are not revealed but the scope of the application is to show clients what their peers are doing. Pie-charts display the percentage of long and short spreadets on a particular market and what traders in that market are placing other bets on. Users can also see similar client sentiment charts for the most popular bets each day. IG Markets is independent from Insight for IG Index (not sure if that’s good or bad). Comment: I’m not sure whether Insight will help traders much but still another little area to muddy the waters even more 😉 Percentages based on number of clients gives a different measure than if based on weight of money. If 9 traders have say a £1pp up bet and two have £50pp downbets, that would show at present as over 80% positive sentiment. If measuring how much money is being risked, it would show as more than 90% negative ;o) I suppose on larger companies/indices where the number of individual positions is large you could assume the size of these positions even out and therefore more confidence could be put to the indicator. On companies with limited open positions I don’t think so. Maybe IG would care to give sentiment readings based on both – the number of clients, and the weight of money. Another thing IG Insight gives us no insight into is traders time frames, nobody knows whether the herd are trading from the 3 min or daily.
• Streaming Newswires: Live Streaming news from Reuters through an integrated news service covering all markets and reports on international equities as well as complete coverage of economic releases. The feed is fast and accurate, it being updated continually and provides unbiased information. You can access it in three ways: Newflashes, Browse and Search, for you to keep up with the latest events.
• Good Customer Service: I used to email them quite often in my early days as a client of theirs, and they were always excellent in their response.

Cons

• Spreads on Shares: While IG provides access to a wide range of markets, their share spreads are often not the tightest, especially for smaller-cap stocks. Though the spreads for major indices like the FTSE and DAX have improved, traders may find more competitive spreads elsewhere for large-cap equities.
• Currency Exposure: With IG you can have your account in Euros and trade stocks in countries which have the Euro (Ireland, Germany, Spain…etc) in Euro but you can’t do that for others like UK, US stocks. What happens is that they take the deposit you need for the trade and convert it into pounds or dollars and therefore you have a currency risk for the period of the trade.
• Platform Stability: During times of high volatility or news releases, IG’s platform has been known to become unstable, which could result in delayed executions or difficulties accessing positions.
• Shorting Stocks: While IG lists stocks available for shorting, not all of them are always available for execution. Traders might be disappointed when they discover that IG has restricted access to shorting a particular stock without prior notice, especially with smaller-cap stocks.
• Transparency: Some users report that IG lacks upfront transparency regarding minimum bet sizes, stop-loss distances, and potential slippage. Miscalculating these parameters can result in rejected trades or unexpected costs. I’d like more transparency up-front on each trade in terms of minimum/maximum bet size and minimum stop loss distance. I’ve had lots of trades rejected because I miscalculate these.
• Not Ideal for Scalpers: IG is not ideal for scalping due to issues with manual execution during volatile periods. Slippage can also be significant, and there have been reports of slow screen updates when executing orders during high volatility.
• And of course IG like other spread betting providers have a disclaimer in its standard terms and conditions of website use to protect them against price discrepancies – so, it’s down to you to watch out for this type of event that can seriously damage your pocketbook. Also, prices are usually slightly delayed but they insist that the graphs are indicative.
• Lack of MetaTrader 5: One notable drawback is the absence of MetaTrader 5, a feature many traders are looking for in newer platforms.