There's no fixed formula for dealing on the financial markets, but having the right elements in place can help you make the most of opportunities as they arise.
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IG is the world’s No.1 spread betting and CFD provider
Has offices in
16 countries
IG has over 1000 employees around the world, including over 300 in-house IT developers
IG has 136,063
active clients
IG has invested £17 million in IT resources over the last two years
IG, the world's first financial spread betting company, was founded by Stuart Wheeler in a London flat in 1974
The name IG comes from ‘Investors Gold’ – the company was originally founded to enable people to trade the price of gold as an index rather than dealing in the commodity itself
Spread betting is a tax-free way to take a position on whether you think a market will rise or fall, without having to buy the underlying asset
92,000 people placed spread bets in the UK last year – that's 4,000 more than the year before
44% of UK spread bettors
have an IG account
UK spread bettors are most likely to be male professionals living in Dublin or London
Approximately 90% of spread bets are ‘buy’
(or long) positions
In 1982 IG became the first UK company to offer spread betting on the FT30
Contracts for difference allow you to open a contract for the difference in price of an asset, from the point of opening to when you close
25,000 people traded CFDs in the UK last year
More than 1 in 3 UK CFD traders have an IG account
In 2002 IG markets became Australia’s first CFD provider
You can trade share CFDs with IG from 0.1% commission and 5% margin
Unlike spread bets, most CFDs don’t have expiry dates
The foreign exchange market, also called forex or FX, is a global decentralised market for trading currencies
Last year there was a 6% increase in the number of people trading forex
61% of UK spread bettors
deal on forex
Over 40% of UK retail forex traders are IG clients, making IG the UK’s largest retail forex provider
There are 182 official currencies used in the United Nations member states
IG offers markets on over
80 currency pairs
GBP/USD is known as ‘cable’ because London and New York used to conduct trades via a cable under the Atlantic Ocean
Currency pair nicknames include the Chunnel (EUR/GBP), Loonie (USD/CAD) and Aussie (AUD/USD)
The US dollar is involved in nearly 90% of all forex transactions
The three major forex trading countries are the UK, US and Japan
The most commonly traded currencies are the USD, JPY, EUR, GBP, CAD, AUD and CHF
With IG you can take a position on the indices, including the FTSE 100, plus major industry sectors
76% of UK spread bettors
deal on indices
IG offers access to more than
35 sectors of the FTSE 350
Global stock indices are influenced by many factors including non-farm payrolls, the monthly US employment update
The FTSE 100 began at a base level of 1000 in 1984 and reached an all-time high of 6950.6 in December 1999
The oldest continuous index in the UK is the FT 30, which was established in 1935
You can trade over
6000 global shares with IG
In 1995 IG became the first UK company to allow spread betting on individual shares
Facebook’s initial public offering was held in May 2012, with a peak market capitalisation of over $104 billion
The company with the biggest market capitalisation is Apple – it held this position all of last year too
Commodities are any raw materials or agricultural products that can be bought and sold
You can take a position on a wide range of commodities with IG, from soya beans to silver
Over 41,000 IG clients around the world trade commodities
56% of IG’s UK clients
trade commodities
50% of IG’s Australian clients trade commodities, compared to just 13% of Japanese clients
174,100 tonnes of gold have been mined in human history
In 1980 silver hit an all-time high of $49.45 per troy ounce (that’s around $138 in today’s money)
Binaries are bets and trades based around a single question, like whether an underlying market will reach a certain point before a fixed time and date
48% of the binary deals placed with IG last year were on five-minute markets
Over 2.5 million binary trades were made with IG in the first half this year
12% of IG clients
have traded binaries
You can access over 10,000 different financial markets using IG’s dealing platform
41,000 people use IG’s
dealing platform each day
Over 5.7 million orders are accepted via IG’s platform each month
IG’s platform experiences
less than 0.1% downtime
99.51% of IG trades are
executed in 0.1 seconds
IG’s ‘tear-off’ prices, tickets and charts mean you can still view them even when you close the main platform
IG launched the UK’s first online financial spread betting platform in 1998
IG has a range of free mobile apps to support iPhone, Android, Windows Phone and BlackBerry
36% of UK spread bettors
deal from their iPhones
30,000 people access IG
on their mobiles each day
1,271,131 deals are placed with IG each month using mobiles – that’s more than 25% of IG’s total deals
IG has free tablet apps for iPad and Android, with Windows coming soon
11,000 UK spread bettors
deal from their iPads
20% of UK spread bettors intend to start dealing from an iPad in the near future
IG clients placed 2,280,621 deals using iPads in the last year
Since the start of 2012, over 3 million deals have been placed with IG using iPads
MetaTrader 4 is a popular third-party platform – it’s now available with IG so you can combine the benefits of MT4 with an established provider and advanced execution systems
More than 166,100 traders
around the world use MT4
Around 32% of UK traders
use MetaTrader
60% of forex traders use MetaTrader in the US, 53% in Singapore and 49% in Germany
Forex traders can use IG’s MT4 service to trade 34 currency pairs
Over 300 brokers and
banks worldwide use MT4
You can benefit from leverage of up to 400:1 when using MT4 with IG
With MT4 you can use Expert Advisors (EAs) to trade automatically
Automated trading is when algorithmic computer programs are used to identify trends then trade automatically
30% of MT4 forex traders
use automated trading
37% of UK spread bettors think it’s useful to have access to automated trading
IG’s price improvement technology means that if a better price becomes available as you click to deal, we can give you that price
IG’s price improvement technology saved clients over £10 million between January and December 2012
IG’s multi-venue technology sources share prices from Chi-X and BATS, two of Europe’s leading exchanges
DMA stands for direct market access – DMA trades are executed extremely quickly, allowing traders to take advantage of short-lived opportunities
Using IG’s FIX API you can trade directly into the order books of global stock exchanges
When you use IG’s DMA platforms, the Smart Order Router technology connects to multiple trading venues and dark pools to ensure the best execution
With IG’s extension for the Google Chrome browser, you can open deals from any page on the web
The IG Dealing Chrome browser extension is optimised for 22 key financial and news websites, including Bloomberg, Reuters and the Wall Street Journal
To date, 2362 users have installed the IG Dealing Chrome browser extension
Reuters is an international news agency with headquarters in New York
Reuters was
established in 1851
Reuters operates in more than 200 cities in 94 countries
Reuters is available
in around 20 languages
The market insight pages at IG.com are open to everyone, and include news, analysis and data for over 7,000 markets
65% of UK spread bettors use technical analysis when planning their positions
2 in 5 UK spread bettors rely on their instincts (that’s double the proportion of CFD traders in Germany)
Just under half of UK spread bettors use business and economic news to research positions
IG charts are free to all clients, and anyone can access them via the market insight pages at IG.com
11.5% of IG clients place
deals directly from charts
47% of IG clients in Austria open positions from charts, compared to only 5% in Russia
The most popular IG chart resolutions are the 5 minute and 1 day views, followed closely by the 1 hour and 15 minute views
‘Candle stick’ charts are the most popular, with 76% of people viewing IG charts in this setting
60% of people use at least one indicator when looking at IG charts
The most popular indicators for IG charts are Moving Average, MACD and RSI
The top 3 annotation tools used on IG charts are the horizontal line, trend line and Fibonacci tool
L2 Dealer is IG’s own downloadable DMA platform, designed for advanced traders
34,641 deals were placed over IG's L2 Dealer platform last year
Originally developed for IG’s own traders, L2 Dealer is now continually updated based on client feedback
ProRealTime is the leading web-based advanced charting package, available free to IG clients
ProRealTime lets you view market events from the last 20 minutes up to the last 30 years
Nearly 38% of IG clients who deal from the web-based platform also deal from ProRealTime charts
ProRealTime has over 100 indicators, covering everything from price to volatility