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Pairs Trading/ Stat Arb/Market Neutral Strategies

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Spoegs
Contributor
Anyone else using the SBK platform to trade Pairs, Stat Arb or Market Neutral Strategies? I started a portfolio of market neutral pairs about a month ago. Using CFD's to create long/short pairs. Paying some school fees by not cutting some losses early enough and not allowing profits to run. Positions typically in the R15K to R45K (ie R15K long/R15K short) range at the moment. Typically looking for opportunities that will give 4 to 15% within 15 to 60 days. SBK's CFD cost structure doesn't support this kind of trading particularly well, taking brokerage, spread, borrowing costs into account you need anywhere between 2.5% and 3% on each trade to break even. I realise that the small position sizes are counting against me, but does SBK have any plans to offer better pricing for people who want to trade smaller position sizes relatively frequently? Anyone using other instruments to trade these kind of strategies for small postion sizes?
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8 REPLIES 8
SimonPB
Valued Contributor
nothing you can do about the spread .. that just the market .. the 0.35% a good rate .. the R57 hurts at small size ..
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djw
Regular Contributor
we are day traders and pay 1 basic point in and 1 out - no basic - much fairer rate
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Electrox
Super Contributor
GLOBAL TRADER CFD's no minimum charge any size you trade. just pay 0.35% per click of the underlying value
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SimonPB
Valued Contributor
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Electrox
Super Contributor
all u pay is the actual bid offer add or subtract the 0.35% from it. so if you wanna go long AGL at R400 when som1 offers that price..you will be put long at R400 + 0.35% on the GT cfd platform..
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Spoegs
Contributor
How do you know that you're getting it at R400 (underlying), have you checked that there's no "extra spread"? If so this sounds like quite a good alternative. All this becomes critical for me. The way I'm trading at the moment any extra spread hurts. Maybe the "hidden spread" is less than the R57 in and out that SBK are charging. IG markets apparently is 0.35% with R100 min implying minimum positions of R28k. Maybe SBK a good place to "cut your teeth" and other platforms better after that.
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Electrox
Super Contributor
I know cause i been with them for 3 years. go get a demo and see the live feed for yourself.
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Not applicable
Nedbank CFD's by far the best IMO. Trade results in a position taken out in the market, you can enter the bid/ask auction (which means you can by at the bid price) - and comms are 0.4% with a minimum comms of R30. Platform is realtime and the overnight charges are the cheapest. Slight drawback is that partial orders incur full comms, and multiple trades are not rolled into one, but that can be mitigated by paying a bit of attention at the order volumes.
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