Some suggestions on improving IG

[csw2002]

I am sure some of these suggestions have come up before. I understand a new beta of MyIG is coming out and hence I'd hope that the suggestions get included for possible future enhancement.

 

(1) Sentiment data. Currently, IG offers client sentiment. Short of scraping the screen regularly, we have no way of accessing the data historically. I actually find the data very useful. Could IG possibly provide this set of data to active traders. I am more than happy to pay for the data or alternatively as IG has done for other data feeds - if traders make enough trades, offer the data free on a rebate basis or charge a fee for non-active traders. Since my understanding is that IG (most of the time) doesn't trade against IG users' positions, helping traders improve with the supply of sentiment data should not be to any detriment of IG - in fact, it should find users on IG platform become more sticky provided users find the data useful (which I am pretty sure of).

 

(2) Weekly options. At the moment, we are only able to trade current week options. As I use options for hedging quite extensively, I often find I am in need of next week's option (or even in a few weeks). I can't see how hard it is for IG to offer it since IG offlays the risk to the market anyway. Given the spread being charged (12 to 16 points on weekly DJI options), IG is getting a very fat margin on it and I simply can't see why IG won't offer more weeklies. In addition, for longer dated options on ES/YM, Monday trading is only offered after London opens. I can't see why this is the case as US market already is open for option trades on futures on Sunday night. Given IG runs an automated system, why the half day delay?

 

(3) Dedicated customer service for active traders. During bouts of market volatilty, a lot of markets go into telephone order only mode. Well, when we ring the dealing desk, we are put on hold for a very very long time. This defeats the whole purpose of having telephone execution on standby when we couldn't access it on a timely fashion. Again, I am not suggesting it for all users. At least active users (say those who turn over at least 20 trades a week) should be offered premium support.

 

 

[csw2002]

Another peeve issue that I have when using IG's own charting or ProRealTime has to do with charting for futures. Instead of continuous future charts as everyone else does, we only get limited data (based on the history of the future), or we get huge gaps which are the artefact of the rollovers. What makes it so hard to create continuous future charts (or turn it off via configuration on an account by account basis in case someone doesn't want it)? A related issue is the lack of volume data on futures chart. I understand that cash charts such Wall St don't have volumes because it includes cash hours and adjusted prices based on futures pricing outside regular sessions. There is absolutely no reason why the future charts (or example, Wall St Future which is really YM) shouldn't include volume. There are so many technical indicators that can't be used due to the missing volume data.

[Zero]

 

Hi - I like your suggestions 2 and 3!  Lets hope IG consider them. 

[TomB]

Hi 

 

Thank you very much for your suggestions, please find below comments on each:

 

• Sentiment data is a fairly recent offering to IG and has proved very popular with clients. I think your idea of offering historical data would be useful and I will pass this on directly to our development team for consideration. We want to provide our clients with as much information and education as possible to assist in their trading, as you correctly mentioned we do not trade against user’s positions.

 

• With regard to our weekly options, they are market made products and not priced directly off the underlying. The delay on open is due to the manual intervention required to set them up which is handled by our UK options team. The desk are looking at offering further weekly options on the platform as you mention, certain administrative hurdles have prevented us from doing so but we hope to overcome this to make them available to clients in the future.

 

• We have a dedicated global trading services team that operate 24 hours to deal with client queries. The majority of occasions you will get through to somebody straight away, however there can be instances where holding on the phone is required. In this event please hold on the line and you will eventually get through. We do offer our premium clients quicker response times to calls and e-mails, for more information please visit the following page: https://www.ig.com/uk/premium-services.

 

• The reason futures charts can have gaps is because the underlying market codes for futures contracts are re-used when they expire. This happens in a cycle which then results in chart gapping. I understand this can be a little confusing however, we are starting to implement undated contracts which will overcome this issue. Furthermore, we are looking to add volume data for more of the markets we offer, so watch this space.

Thanks,

 

Tom

[Kodiak]

Any progress with the historical sentiment data?

 

Thinking of something like an indicator in prorealtime from -100 to 100?

 

i see others like ETX and FXCM have some new features with sentiment data,

[japost]

It would be great when including volume on standard platform charts if we can have red bars when price bar is down and green bars when price bar is up, rather than just continuous grey coloured bars. Would make life so much easier.

 

This already happens when you run a chart via the apple app on your iPhone so why not on the classic platform when running on your PC. Most other platforms I have experienced do this on standard charts.

[AntonL-IG]

Hi

 

This feature is already available on the New Web Trading Platform. You also have the ability to change the colours of the volume bars if you do not like the red and green bars. To change the colour click on the name "volume" in the indicator window, it will come up with your indicator settings tab from where you can change the colour as shown below in the screenshot.

 

 

Thanks

Anton

[AntonL-IG]

Hi

 

I asked our developers about the sentiment data and they agree that it would be a very useful addition, although at this time it is still quite far down the development line and as a result I am not able to give a definitive timeline.

 

Thank you for your patience and for taking the time to ask the question.

 

Thanks

Anton

[japost]

Hi Anton, How do I access the new platform?

 

Does it also allow you to add a moving average to the volume bars?

[ChrisWa]

Hi  

 

To access the new platform you will need to log in to your IG account and go to your My IG section. All your IG live and demo accounts will be listed here, simply click on the blue tab to launch our new web trading platform. 

 

The moving average volume bars are not available on the charts at the moment, but this functionality is available on the advanced charting package we offer, Pro Real Time.

 

I agree that this would be a good functionality to have added to our IG charts and will pass this on to our developers. In the meantime if you have any more feedback to add please do join in the discussion and leave your feedback here. 

 

Thanks! 

[japost]

Hi ,

 

Sorry I can't see any blue tabs in My IG section I can see all my accounts and then the green button to open the classic platform next to each account but nothing else. Is the new platform available to all yet?

[ChrisWa]

Hi 

 

The new web platform is available across all IG spread betting clients now. I will be contacting you via email shortly to show you how the IG dashboard should look and the section you will need to click on.

 

Thanks!

 

 

 

[andysinclair]

On 06/02/2017 at 11:38, AntonL-IG said:

Hi

 

I asked our developers about the sentiment data and they agree that it would be a very useful addition, although at this time it is still quite far down the development line and as a result I am not able to give a definitive timeline.

 

Thank you for your patience and for taking the time to ask the question.

 

Thanks

Anton

Hi @AntonL-IG

Has any progress been made on making historical sentiment data available via the API?

If it is either not going to happen or is still far down the development line, would IG have any objections if I was to store sentiment data over time and make it available through an Excel Add-in I am developing i.e. collect my own historic data?

Thanks.