Does a broker have a legal duty to provide recent indicative ask and bids?

💬 Trading 212 chat
1

Further more what is classed as indicative in terms of timescale? Is a quote from 1 minute ago ok? 1hr ago ok? 1wk ago ok? 1 month ok?

I’ve been battling T212 for most of this year on its Bloomberg data feed and specifically AIM instruments.

The main issue faced is either lack of new quotes (for sometimes weeks) or the quote is wrongly updated such as only new BIDs come in which leads to fake zero spreads. When the BID overtakes the ASK that’s got to be an indication something isn’t right.

A current example from this Thursday

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Now when I’ve complained about this I battle for an hour before the chat check other brokers and acknowledge there’s a clear issue. However they then follow up with a pointless and condescending email telling me it’s on AIM, it’s low liquidity, what spread is, prices are just indicative etc

Occasionally I also get copy+pastes which are worrying factually incorrect like it’s showing the last trade, it’s plotting the bid in ISA, or every trade has been off book.

Now it can be the case stocks with low liquidity can take awhile between new quotes.

However importantly this is not that.

If other several brokers with raw spreads can all get the same new current ask and bid the second it updates and T212 still continues to show the old ask and bid from two weeks ago there’s a clear issue with the liquidity provider.

The main issue I’ve faced is that I’ve missed many buying and selling opportunities because I’ve had no alert through. I check on say AJ Bell and go oh fuck I’ve just missed that spike that happened this morning, go back to T212 and it’s still showing the same bid and ask from a week ago.

Even on fairly liquid AIM stocks like GGP there’s been cases where instead of the new quote coming in at 8:00am like ten other brokers we get the first quote of the day at 2:13pm completely missing all times the ask and bid have changed since.

What’s also concerning is the amount of times I’ve gone to buy or sell and checked elsewhere and the price shown is wildly inaccurate. Whilst it matters less when the stocks price is 200p when you are dealing with stocks that are 0.08p its a massive financial impact if out-of-date.

Anyway I’m publically writing this to see what others think. It’s basically got to the point of 15hrs of chats and 25 support tickets and now escalated to the point T212 have basically offered me £25 to end the discussion, or take it to the FCA.

I really don’t want to dob them into the FCA for having wildly out of date prices shown. I just want them to fix the issue.

What’s frustrating is T212 have Bloomberg terminal, and they can just compare that with the Bloomberg data feed and challenge them on it. Even if they don’t want to switch to another provider at least challenge them on it and report the issue.

@ a few staff to see if they can comment

@David @Martin @Tony.V @PeterA @Wit @Ivan

10 Likes
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I don’t think t212 is really trying to be a live trade platform although I agree with you all the way.

The way they advertise the service seems to me that they are only looking for long term investors that will use pies to set and forget.

Or cfd users that just care about direction/margin.

Seen as this service is always triggered at the same time the importance of trade times becomes irrelevant despite still being very important. Due to the self investment it will action on its own with the price having no affect on the decision.

I think for t212 to change they’re ways we will have to start paying the service in an obvious direct manner or they don’t really have to do any more than they already are.

On many occasions the information available on t212 has been deceiving to say the least and I have mentioned this many times.

For instance they show dividend values for companies that have suspended dividends.
The company information is always out of date.
The prices rarely compare during short spikes to any other market provider.

Then the last is aim shares, you have absolutely no control over how when or even if you will actually buy in. I appreciate it takes longer but not days.

It’s very difficult to get the best price either way using t212 you have to be prepared to buy in the middle and sell in the middle so like you say unless the stock rallies your rarely rewarded short term.

It would also be nice to send your bid price out even if it doesn’t action rather having to sell at the best price they can achieve at that time or likewise buy

3

Trading 212 doesn’t show forward yield, so a suspended dividend does not affect trailing yield

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So I will still get the dividend for Lloyd’s?

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Well in terms of the buying and selling on TOTV T212 have zero control over when it may get filled. You can’t guarantee a buyer or seller will want the deal.

They are just pipeing the request off to Interactive Brokers via their API, then waiting for the reply from IB from the exchange once filled.

So the displaying of the prices and the actual trades executing are two separate processes.

Also the info provided is from Reuters.

So if you remove fractionals/values out of it you have info from Reuters, data feed from Bloomberg, and trades via IB.

They are essentially just piecing together the various APIs into an interface.

Keeping with my issue is that the Bloomberg data feed my issue is that say with the zero spread screenshot above.

As a customer I am to believe 0.08 is indicative of the BID

I shouldn’t have to check the order book and T&S and find best bid is 0.07

It’s a huge impact if you placed a market sell holding an average of 0.08 thinking it would be a break even exit, and a limit sell would never execute until the BID came up.

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No I was referring to you saying that the information is misleading, the dividend section does not show forward yield at all, only previous, so it’s no wrong. It would be nice to see upcoming dividends though, including amount, ex date and pay date.

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@cavanhagan @Lenos1980 Are we talking about this info here?

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It’s just pulling in from here T212 don’t manually enter any data.

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8

If it comes up in the dividend section on the search for stocks bar and then shows a percentage value in the dividend section for that stock how is that not misleading? Why does anyone care about what other people have had in dividends? Surely by showing a value that at the very least means they are offering a dividend on those shares, not that the dividend has been suspended?

If it’s not right or real why show it at all?
Incorrect information is worse than no information at all and this confirms my point that it’s misleading

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This is the part I mean

Screenshot_20201219-204714_Trading 212
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Oh ok I’m not sure on that I would guess those are dynamic.

So if I click All ratios I’m seeing 3.21% instead from Reuters

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So they paid out 1.12 per share.

Last trade is 34.90

So

(1.12/34.90)*100 = 3.21%

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But unfortunately the dividends for UK banks have been suspended but still t212 lists the dividend values.
The bank of England is lifting the blanket ban so the payments should resume, but surely we shouldn’t have to check the information that t212 is giving or they may aswell leave it blank or suggest that we do our own checks

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Oh I agree but it would mean a team dedicated to following news etc and adding code to adapt the output as everything is just pulled in dynamically.

They have just set up the code to pull the data in. And gone done, next task.

Without turning this into a moan about T212 thread they could be more on the ball.

Take the recent FCA crypto malarkey which took them forever to react. T212 should called a meeting day 1 and worked out it’s response and then worked out to to inform all it’s clients. I think they are taking away the buy button for everyone, but I’ve lost track if before the actual deadline and if only UK customers. The CFD Crypto threads have been painful to read.

Anyway I hope we can get more posts discussing the Bloomberg feed. And I don’t look like a crazy one man crucade.

I don’t think it’s unreasonable to ask them to compare the Bloomberg Terminal with the Bloomberg data feed. They as clients of Bloomberg should be giving them grief that AIM feed quotes are so poor and demanding Bloomberg pull their finger out and fix the issue.

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Since not being successful in buying any aim shares due to the execution times I’ve given up so I haven’t looked into it that much.
I’m not currently day trading either and with the recent outages I have not been happy to trade on busy days incase I get caught out so my method has been a virtually buy and hold strategy.

Hopefully someone else comes along that can assist you further or atleast back up your thread with there own views

14

Well the main reason may be down to how the stock is traded you have SETS and SETSqx

The AIM with low liquidity will use SETSqx to help with that.

Basically it means orders are put in and then at specific times throughout the day they are matched. One on open, one on close and three in the day.

The auction times are 8am, 9am , 11am, 2pm and 4:35pm

So if you placed a limit buy at 8:30am you’ll be :crossed_fingers: at 9am it gets executed.

If you market order you can :crossed_fingers: that it gets filled during the day OTC instead. Which is off book. But you are hoping there is someone who will take the other side of the trade.

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So just bumping my own thread as I’ve just sent a reply back.

@David @Martin @Tony.V @PeterA @Wit @Ivan @George

Can anyone comment?

That is really disappointing to hear that T212 can’t be bothered to look at the issue and would rather chuck £25 than actually fix it. I understand it can take time to go through tickets (and thats not cost effective) but you don’t need to do that just simply check the feed.

Can you please see ticket 398664 which I’ve just had a response on. It has basic details of how the terminal has 0.07 and the feed (and T212) still showing 0.075

Why cant T212 not just compare Bloomberg terminal with the Bloomberg data feed, that’s not an unreasonable request. It should be no longer than 5-10mins for someone like David to fire up the terminal and look at the T212 app. Done.

When you see the data doesn’t match you can hopefully understand the severity of the issue, and why I’m fighting so hard to get T212 to improve its platform.

I really don’t want to take it FCA for having out-of-date (sometimes weeks out) indicative prices which could have significant negative financial impact. As it would be a clear win and fine against T212 that I don’t want to unnecessarily cause. You as a broker have a duty to provide reliable quotes so you shouldn’t be trying to just pay a tiny £25 to sweep it under the rug. I’d rather you just check and then make contact with Bloomberg to query the difference between terminal and data feed.

Also in that ticket another good example of having bad advice from [redacted].

"Furthermore, please take into account that the sell price is not visible on the Invest account. "

Like what of course the sell price is visible in the Invest, and if you haven’t bought it’s under Instrument details. (I even supplied the screengrab on the ticket). Can you please educate your staff, constantly getting these weird incorrect statements.

Phil

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No one likes to answer a difficult question

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I don’t see why you wouldn’t take the complain further if you’re unsatisfied with the response?

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The infuriating thing about it is it’s not a difficult question or task.

In the ticket I even did the work in finding an example. So it requires someone like @David to open the terminal on today’s date at 8:37 and see the drop to 0.07

If you look at the Bloomberg terminal you will see at 8:37am the BID decreased to 0.07

The trade at the time was a sell of 907,069 shares at 0.07577 that caused the drop where the BID remained 0.07 to the end of the day

You’ll see this on other brokers that have similar raw spreads eg AJ Bell. 0.08 ASK and a 0.07 BID the moment it changed.

If you open T212 and look at Bloomberg data it’s showing the BID still as 0.075.

And here is the second step done

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I’ll keep posting responses if it helps your cause but your majority way out of my pay grade as this time so I’m not of any real help

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@Finki do you happen to know what responsibility a broker has in providing quotes?

Say if the best BID was actually now at 5.

If I had an average of 10, and T212 was pulling through a BID from two weeks ago of 15 and showing in profit, and a market order was placed and filled at 5 would they be at fault for the misleading quote?

Is there a time delay where it’s deemed no longer indicative?

The general issue I’ve battled against is having the support ticket say well it’s AIM sometimes stocks don’t have a new quote which is absolutely fine.

But when you have other brokers that have raw spreads and get exactly the same ASK and BID the moment it changes. And T212 is still showing a quote from two weeks ago it’s clearly not the stock. On KOD as an example the ASK and BID changed around 50 times in a three week period and all other brokers had the correct same prices displayed each time it changed, T212 still had a quote from the previous month.

Imagine if you had that same issue with TSLA and the ASK was from the previous month.

People would be flipping furniture.

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