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

The straight answer is no I donā€™t.

My guess would be they can provide you indicative if they tell you that. My guess is they are not mandated to make sure that feed is always correct (live or historically). Iā€™d guess the T&Cs indemnify against 3rd party errors.

In other news - I got suspended from the FreeTrade forum! I think youā€™ve been suspended before so now Iā€™m part of that club. Cool. :cowboy_hat_face:

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You didnā€™t say that their wiggly charts are crap too did you? Thatā€™s a 1000 year ban.

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image

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@phildawson As we are not the counterparty to your trades in real shares, any price we display can only be indicative. We send your orders to the market, but the price may be available only for a limited size or may have moved by the time your order arrives. The prices we display are indications of the price at which someone else is willing to buy or sell. Our obligation is to ensure that any orders you send are executed at the prevailing price when they arrive. For a market order, this may be better or worse than the indicative price.

P.S. Weā€™re checking with Bloomberg if anything can be done to improve the quotes. However, thereā€™s no ETA, yet.

Lol how? Weā€™re you advertising to much :joy:

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Correct
:grimacing:
ā€¦

Also exposed some ISA failingsā€¦ so I guess they didnā€™t like that :shushing_face:

You can see from the thread my comments were deleted

Hi @David yep so 100% understand itā€™s indicative, Iā€™ve used that word myself quite a few times (too many) in this thread.

To be clear all of this you are stating I donā€™t have any issue whatsoever. So absolutely nothing about execution or that you have indicative prices. Iā€™m on the same page.

:point_down:

What I do have issue is how old that indicative price is thatā€™s shown. As the above example illustrated having an ASK (that was of indicative of where the buy price was last Friday) still showing this morning leads to misleading purchases.

And as the screengrabs showed from various brokers they all had the same correct ask/bid the second it changed, it was just T212 that was still showing the same as it had no new quote since the 18th.

So in summary if all the other brokers can show 0.085 and then 0.09 as the ask moved (the second it moved) why was Bloomberg not providing a new quote (since the 18th)

I keep going back to it but imagine if for TSLA you were showing an indicative price of where it was three weeks ago. You would have thousands of angry customers goingā€¦

:face_with_symbols_over_mouth: wtf it was showing $404 why is it going through at $640

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:pray: :raised_hands:

thank you

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Just thought Iā€™d add checking at the moment again a fake zero spread inside T212

The ASK is not 0.1, itā€™s not even the previous 0.105 it missed, itā€™s 0.11

Edit: again I should add looking at literally any other broker now Iā€™m seeing 0.1 BID and 0.11 ASK.

Itā€™s just Bloomberg/T212 thatā€™s stuck on an out of date ASK. Iā€™m hoping the BID is raised above 0.1 next just to see it break the zero spread, and make it look like itā€™s cheaper to buy than sell.

@David is there any update to share from Bloomberg?

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Not that this solves this strange issue. But perhaps you shouldnā€™t try and trade teeny tiny micro caps at $10 or $20mā€¦?

:face_with_raised_eyebrow:

That isnt the issue, if youā€™ve read any of the above we are comparing the Bloomberg feed that provides the quotes with numerous other brokers that also show a raw spread.

If ten+ brokers can all show the current ask/bid the second it changes and all match, why is the Bloomberg feed getting stuck for sometimes weeks.

Thereā€™s also the second issue that when the Bloomberg data feed does provide a new quote itā€™s only either the ask or bid that moves. You can see above the fake raw spread it creates, in this specific example the ask hasnā€™t updated.

This has a massive financial impact if anyone is placing market orders and also limits wonā€™t get filled if the customer believes the ask shown is recent.

Suggesting people just donā€™t trade small cap or low liquidity because Bloomberg canā€™t produce recent quotes isnā€™t helpful.

I should add the actual trading via IB isnā€™t affected so absolutely fine to trade, you just have to check elsewhere to see what the actual ask/bid is at as the one on T212 is almost always wrong/out-of-date.

And also to add again this issue isnā€™t specific to KOD itā€™s affecting all AIM stocks with various liquidity and market cap.

Itā€™s important we get recent quotes for all instruments otherwise they arenā€™t indicative. The donā€™t use it if itā€™s broken isnā€™t the attitude we need, and majority of customers wonā€™t know itā€™s wrong to not use it either, as they would be trusting what T212 shows is correct, we simply need Bloomberg to fix the issue or T212 to use another provider. The only time the new customer knows itā€™s wrong is after it gets filled for hundreds/thousands more than they were expecting or simply canā€™t get filled because the ASK shown is no where near indicative.

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Just spent a few minutes looking through, going to fill this table in as I donā€™t believe these are zero spreads.

@David so it doesnā€™t just affect AIM, LSE main market too.

- - T212 ASK T212 BID - - ELSEWHERE ASK ELSEWHERE BID
UPL Upland Resources Ltd 0.55 0.55 XLON NO STAMP DUTY 0.5 0.45
MUST Mustang Energy PLC 15 15 XLON 13.5 11.5
URU URU Metals Ltd 250 250 Illiquid AIM 2 250 200
ALS Altus Strategies PLC 80 80 Illiquid AIM 2 82 73
TRU Trufin PLC 55 55 Illiquid AIM 2 50 45
AAAP Anglo African Agriculture PLC 7.5 7.5 XLON 8 6.5
ARG Argos Resources Ltd 2.5 2.5 Illiquid AIM 2 2.5 1.8
CRU Coral Products PLC 10 10 Illiquid AIM 2 10 8.5
ZIN Zinc Media Group PLC 55 55 Illiquid AIM 2 55 50
ORCP Oracle Power PLC 0.55 0.55 Illiquid AIM 2 0.55 0.5
SML Strategic Minerals Plc. 0.4 0.4 Illiquid AIM 2 0.45 0.35
HUNT Hunters Property PLC 65 65 Illiquid AIM 2 70 60
GST Gstechnologies Ltd 0.13 0.13 XLON 0.15 0.14
VOG Victoria Oil & Gas PLC 5 5 Illiquid AIM 1 4.5 4
HNG Hawkwing PLC 4.5 4.5 XLON 4 3.5
OTAQ Otaq PLC 28 28 XLON 29 26
CCAP Conduity Capital PLC 1.6 1.6 Illiquid AIM 2 1.8 1.6
LOOK Lookers PLC 21 21 XLON 20.95 20.45
PXEN Prospex Energy PLC 2 2 Illiquid AIM 2 2.4 2
FUL Fulham Shore PLC 10 10 Illiquid AIM 2 10 9
MBO MobilityOne Ltd 8.5 8.5 Illiquid AIM 2 10 8.5
KOD Kodal Minerals PLC 0.1 0.1 Illiquid AIM 1 0.11 0.1
PERE Pembridge Resources PLC 5.5 5.5 XLON 5.4 5
EDR Egdon Resources PLC 1.4 1.4 Illiquid AIM 2 1.8 1.5
MPL Mercantile Ports and Logistics Ltd 0.25 0.25 Illiquid AIM 2 0.31 0.29
CORA Cora Gold Ltd 8 8 Illiquid AIM 2 9 8
STAR Starcom PLC 1 1 Illiquid AIM 2 1 0.95
AYM Anglesey Mining PLC 6.5 6.5 XLON 7 6
AGTA Agriterra Ltd 7.5 7.5 Illiquid AIM 1 7.5 4.5
STA Star Phoenix Group Ltd 1.8 1.8 Illiquid AIM 2 1.65 1.3
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Is it possibly it costs them to much to update all the stocks so theyā€™re justā€¦ not doing it.

Itā€™s not about cost itā€™s the same Bloomberg feed that gives us TSLA, AMZN, AAPL.

Itā€™s just shit. You can see in the table how dangerous it can be trusting the values being pull in.

Hopefully Bloomberg will compare the Bloomberg terminal with the Bloomberg feed and go oh yeah they donā€™t match at all :confused:

This is why Iā€™ve spent most of 2020 on chat and making support tickets. And why Iā€™m so hacked off when I get a reply from support which is factually incorrect or starts trying to teach me about the spread like I was born yesterday.

Bid and ask are often the same, even on major and very liquid stocks. GE has both at $10.79 currently.

Iā€™m not sure it really works to construct this table at a weekend when markets are closed.

My guess is that Bloomberg is a low cost data provider. As dealing is free on Trading 212 they have to be very cost conscious on things like that. I sometimes look at prices elsewhere to compare, but rarely see any difference. But I donā€™t buy and sell AIM stocks.

I think it has been explained that some data providers show current bid/ask. Others show price of last trade buy or sell.

Yeah but is the Bloomberg feed its self actually off or are 212 just not pulling from the feed frequently enough on these stocks because of cost? Or maybe as @Richard.W theyā€™re just paying for a low cost feed that only updates the higher traded stocks

Firstly is comparing raw spread with raw spread.

Nothing to do with last trade. The elsewhere is the ask and bid elsewhere.

These are not cases where it finished on a zero spread. If you open the candle chart in T212 youā€™ll see when it last got updated. The Bloomberg feed can be weeks out of date between quotes, whilst other brokers that have raw spreads all show the current bid/ask the second it changes.

Iā€™ll pick one at random MUST showing a zero spread of 15 last quote 18th December.

Yep thatā€™s wrong

And hereā€™s those trades on the 31st.

So in summary it missed all of this where it dropped, and the ask going to 13.5 and bid at 11.50

So anyone putting a market sell on this wonā€™t be getting anywhere close to the 15 shown in app because itā€™s so out of date. Lucky to get 11.5. And limit sell have no hope of filling.

Also without detracting from the above issue where new quotes arenā€™t being provided when they should, this isnā€™t the case at all that it was zero spread, It helps having L2 and T&S. Only the BID was 10.79 on close

AJ Bell
10.78 / 10.80

II
10.78 / 10.80
Screenshot_20210103-144406

HL
10.79 / 10.80
Screenshot_20210103-144606

And looking at the T&S the 10.79 was filling on the BID side.

Basically the current 10.79 on both ASK and BID in T212 isnā€™t right.

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@Richard.W

So MUST has updated! Showing the wrong ASK and BID, but still updated! Much closer than the 15/15 it was showing for a couple weeks.


So it goes 4:25pm on the 18th December, to 8am on the 4th January 2021