Minimum and Maximum Bets
Spread Betting Trading Centre: How does your company compute the spread?
IG Index: On indices spread is expressed in points (eg 2 points on the FTSE or 3 points on GBPUSD). On shares, spread is a percentage, as low as 0.1% (10 basis points) on FTSE100 shares.
Spread Betting Trading Centre: Are there minimum or maximum bets users are restricted to?
IG Index: We do have minimum bets such as £1/point on Wall Street or £5 on UK shares but for an introductory 6-week period our clients can bet on anything in as little as 10p/point. Maximum bets will very much depend on market liquidity – how much we could hedge – but we guarantee to be good in £500/point of the FTSE and Dow in-hours.
Spread Betting Trading Centre: Do you charge fees for your services or is it built into the spread?
IG Index: Apart from the spread, we charge nothing for our services. Internet dealing, technical support, customer service and account management are all free to client. We also have no minimum deposit to open an account and it costs nothing if a client never uses the account.
Spread Betting Trading Centre: Which safe guards does your company provide for their betters?
IG Index: We offer stop losses on almost every market we quote (a notable exception is options which are, if you buy an option, limited risk by definition). In addition we assign an account manager to every client – a real dealer who is on hand to talk through example bets and answer any questions – and seek to educate clients of both the potential rewards and risks of spread betting through our TradeSense programme. This is a 6-week course of information pamphlets, seminars, online databanks and lower minimum bet sizes.
Spread Betting Trading Centre: Are there extra charges for stop-losses, guaranteed stop-losses?
IG Index: We charge nothing extra for non-guaranteed stops. These are akin to the real market (‘market orders’) which carry with them a risk of slippage – that the client gets filled at a worse price if the market moves swiftly through your stop level. If they choose, clients can pay a spread premium and have IG guarantee the stop. This way, a client will know with absolute certainty what their maximum possible loss could be when they trade.
Page 1 Our Spread Betting Services
Page 2 Calculating the spread | Page 3 Spread Betting markets | Page 4 Comon Spread Bet mistakes
