I’m starting to think T212 has little to no idea about the extent of the impact that their fiddling with the spreads has been, and continues to be - which is incredibly alarming.
Let me just put this into perspective to get it off my chest one last time.
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The Nasdaq data I can see is reporting a pre-market price fluctuation of ~$0.10c or -0.98% from $10.15 to $10.05.
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T212 processed this as a magnified drop of $1.14 or -11.6% drop from $9.83 to $8.69 (at this point the spread between the Ask and Bid was 30%)
This is not taking into account the initial spread from the actual share price.
The impact on my account was greater, equivalent to about 15% of my margin, if not more, and when combined with other positions, momentarily pushed me into a margin call and closed positions for a loss before rebounding.
This all happened on a handful of shares being traded. on an instrument that has millions of shares traded each day.
This is not even the worst example demonstrated here, but it is dependent on your volume and size of positions, of course.
Put simple, their spreads are an absolute catastrophe.
T212’s explanation of their spread manipulation is dubious at best - protecting themselves at the expense of their users.
Given the extreme market conditions right now, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to efficiently hedge exposure to popular instruments.
This, unfortunately, requires us to take measures in order not to exceed exposure limits. We have decided not to increase margin requirements (decrease leverage, which would mean a potential stop-out) but rather increase the spread.
I laid a complaint with T212 regarding their spread manipulation but also a request to see the terminal data for this price movement as I am unable to validate this on external platforms, and frankly, I have no reason to trust T212’s platform right now.
Three replies from T212 in the email thread, each time from a different customer care member, each saying a similar thing, educating me on the type of spread they use - Stefan instructing me the definition of a floating spread, or ‘active’ as Stanislav referred to it.
Stefan tells me:
You can be certain that our prices are live and updated within milliseconds, due to the fact that we use big banks, financial institutions, and other large brokers as providers in order to increase reliability.
But this is not true is it? You don’t have to go far in this forum at all to find evidence of technical issues with their data that results in compensation
Mihail informed me:
The decision to amend the trading conditions was not taken lightly
Really? Not taken lightly?
Usually when a company takes such a hard decision with huge (financial) ramifications of their clients and users, they take a careful and calculated approach and make the best effort to inform their users.
Where are the communications from T212 of the amended trading conditions?
- Spread manipulation
- Massive swap rate increases
- Instrument and hedge suspension
- Processing and server issues
The silence is deafening.
In my fourth email I pointed out that they still hadn’t addressed my query regarding the price data on their terminal and past technical glitches, and that I wasn’t asking about spreads, that was the end of any responses by them.
The staff have been active elsewhere though across the board, but haven’t stuck their heads in here after 120+ replies over 24 hours on clearly a hot topic of a pressing issue.
One thing you may be certain about - we’re all working tirelessly to ensure that our clients are receiving nothing less than outstanding service. Digital businesses, like ours, however, cannot commit that an external factor or a technical difficulty won’t somehow affect the expected flow of operations. - Tony.V
Well @Tony.V , I’m not quite sure we agree with the definition of outstanding service you are using.
Regardless of how T212 make their money through CFDs, they make their money through CFDs.
If this was your business model, would you not try to provide a customer and user experience that kept these wheels well oiled? Because from what I can see, there is irreversible damage being done to the T212 brand, and users must be leaving CFDs in droves, while the paper trail left behind on social and other websites will turn away future users.
Surely they have a robust understanding of how complex CFDs are and their clients risk management is without throwing an invisible spanner in the works.
With all that said, @Dao, I appreciate your contributions here. Could you please clarify to me the correct complaints procedure so I know I am following protocol?
Thanks.