Spread Betting

Hi,

I have developed strategies but my problem is placing order.s As I am in the UK I spread bet rather than use CFD’s. The difference is that orders are placed x amount per pip. e.g. £1 per pip, and not in lots.

EA Wizard only places orders as lots which is not relevant, I just want to be able to place an order of £1 per pip movement.

Has anyone else who spread bets encountered this and is there a way around it. Otherwise I love this software.

Many Thanks.

Martin

Hello Martin,

I don’t have much experience with spread betting, do you use MetaTrader4 Expert Advisor for it as well?

If yes, do you have any existing example  of EA that works with spread betting? I want to look how it places orders in £1 instead of in lots.

I’d like to support spread betting trading better in the new version.

Hi Mark,

It would be brilliant if it did support spread betting, as everything else is identical apart from order placement. EA Wizard is head and shoulders above everything else, I want to incorporate pyramiding, the calculation is a breeze in EA Wizard, just about impossible in everything else. It is a big market and EA Wizard is perfect for producing spread betting EA’s.

I don’t have an example I’m afraid. But IG markets, who I have just signed up to have several platforms including MT4, not only can it run EA’s but they have a generator to generate EA’s and the ability to copy the code. I only signed up to them last night so have not had time to play with it yet. Autochartist can be installed on MT4, I seem to remember seeing something where the mt4 code it generated can be copied, and on a spread betting account would include placing orders on  £1 a pip instead of lots. Maybe if you were to sign up and use the demo account to generate a spread betting EA using Autochartist you would have some code to copy, and be able to play with a spread betting account.

My account manager called this morning, I mentioned I was using EA Wizard and said my only problem was placing spread bet orders. He did say he could put me in contact with an IT chap there if I had problems, I could always ask him if it would be ok for you to able to contact this IT chap if you like.

Thank you for getting back, I would love to see spread betting in EA Wizard.

Martin

Sorry Mark, I should have added a link to their website just to be sure

https://www.ig.com/uk

Martin

Hi Notch,

Thanks, I’ll give it a go on the demo account and see what happens, if that works I’m a very happy man. The alternative is to generate a function and call that to place the bets. IG might have the facility for autotrading, but I want to pyramid under certain circumstances, EA Wizard lets me do the calculations of when and how much easily, other software just doesn’t have the flexibility I need, you gotta love EA Wizard.

Martin

Hi Notch,

I have an account with CMC markets and like the web interface, until things start moving fast after a news announcement etc. I’ve had it take nearly a minute just to open the order box, then enter the amount to bet, take an age to come back, then stop loss wait another age, by the time you are ready to get your order in the excitement is over and it’s too late. And as the screen is jumping around trying to grab hold of the stop loss slider to move it to a new position is like trying to play a video game sometimes. One reason for trying IG is that CMC doesn’t allow MT4, quite why CMC don’t have any means of autotrading is beyond me, you would have thought any company big enough to have their name splashed along the side of an America’s Cup yacht would be big enough to have some means of autotrading.

I’ve played with the IG web interface, and experimented with the autotrading tools they have. My EA’s I have developed I tested on MT4 with FXPro, but of course that is CFD’s, but while developing and testing that made no difference. My EA model is pretty simple and could be programmed in any of IG’s autotrading tools, except it involves pyramiding a position once it’s on a trend which has a compounding effect. The programming to decide when to add to the position and by how much is beyond IG’s basic autotrading methods, but a doddle with EA Wizard. Thankfully with spread betting then just banging in the order for the calculated amount is easier than taking how much I want to add to the position and then converting into lots. I’ve yet to try running an EA to see if it places 1 lot as £1 per pip, maybe this weekend.

I will probably try a few brokers that run MT4 and see how they compare.

Does anyone have more recent experience of Spread Betting with MT4 and/or IG?