ADFVN Level 2

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6th Nov '18 by skinner66

14 comments 3860 reads

i lost the post on this but someone said cheaper with other, on level 2,,can anyone comment on this,before i decide to pay.. many thanks

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About the Author

Skinner66

Premium Member

14 comments

monions

6th Nov '18

London South East (LSE) is the best service I've found. Cheaper than ADVFN and with a site that looks like it was designed this century. Also, if you decide to cancel, it is a simple email to do so, whereas I believe ADFVN is a convoluted process and can only be done my mail (not email).

The LSE L2 service is currently £23.99 per month and also gives you information on all trades in real time.

http://www.lse.co.uk/payments/services.asp

AnonymousUser318975

6th Nov '18

If your an LSE customer and tell ADVFN when subscribing (subscribe over the phone), they will most likely price match LSE ;-)

As far as cancelling ADVFN goes, all you need to do is email them. Either via email or their internal message system and request cancellation.

Be aware however, that L2 on LSE is nowhere near as good as on ADVFN. LSE only shows/includes trades on the London Stock Exchange. Whereas ADVFN also shows/includes trades from NEX too. Which if micro cap (AIM) companies are your thing, may be important. As many AIM listed companies are also listed on NEX. Which means trades are often put through NEX to hide them away a bit. Such trades will not show on your usual LSE L2 (be it lse, sharepad, quotestream et all). Indeed, you often seen reference on LSE BB's to price being manipulated up or down by the market makers when there have been no trades. But it is usually an AIM company in question, which is also listed on NEX. And it just so happens that all the days trades have been put through NEX and not LSE. On ADVFN's You see these on the L2 screen (as well as in their list of trades). Normal LSE trades will have a letter along side them (O for ordinary trade etc), whereas NEX trades have no letter. So it is very easy to see all flowing trades and which exchange they are being pushed through.

You will also see reference on ADVFN's service to what they call "Level 3 Montage". This is yet more additional information, not seen on your usual LSE L2 packages. That is a few dark pool type Market Makers that lurk.

BTW: ADVFN's site looks quite clean with an adblocker enabled, ho hum ;)

monions

6th Nov '18

Thanks for the additional information. Interesting about the NEX trades missing. I've always avoided ADFVN as I really dislike the site, but may take a look at the L2.

Lloyd Garvey

6th Nov '18

It keeps being mentioned that level 2 is being considered for this site, then nothing seems to happen. Not sure if there is any time scale for this.

AnonymousUser318975

6th Nov '18

Possibly because this site is geared more towards investing and not trading. I find many investors care not for L2, because although a useful tool, it is (perhaps) much less irrelevant for longer term holds.

So I suspect it is not really high priority to add it here. May be wrong.

donald pond

6th Nov '18

FWIW, I think most people are somewhere between traders and investors: looking for long term winners but happy to take a short term position when the stars are aligned. So I think L2 would be very useful here, as I also think most people don’t want multiple service providers. I don’t much like ADVFN, but sharepad is the obvious comparison, and I would rather stay here (inertia) but will have to reconsider if it doesn’t become a “one stop shop”.

mmarkkj777

6th Nov '18

Personally, I don’t require L2 in Stocko, because they don’t give real time prices either. It’s not really that kind of site ( can I suggest). I use it more for company research, stats, metrics, filters ( screens), background research educational articles and ebooks and a better level of debate, without pumping and dumping, etc.

I’d rather Stocko stay good at what it does, than try to do everything. Just my opinion.

Robbie Burns (Naked Trader) uses ADVFN for L2. If its good enough for him...

I hate the ADVFN bulletin boards though. They need a ‘BS screener’ functionality, though, to save the user time!

AnonymousUser318975

6th Nov '18

I was a subscriber of Sharescope, back in the days when you were required to download software to your computer. That later morphed into Sharepad, which I also then subscribed to. I had L2 on both. However, these days I have no real need (or desire) to constantly check prices every minute of the trading day. Thus L2 is something I am quite happy without.

As for reconsidering subscription, that is merely personal choice isn’t it. For me, I cancelled my Sharepad Pro subs (after being with Iionic for years) in favour of Stocko. I had ran both services side by side for quite a while. Both are excellent of course, but offer different things. Stocko suits me much better. Personal requirements and needs will always vary between end users.

One worry I would have if Stocko ever introduced L2, is how they would make it pay? I am quite sure the annual license fees for L2 (payable to London Stock Exchange I think) are quite high. Then there is an additional £6 per user (if I remember correctly) for everyone who subscribes to L2.

I would be amazed if Stocko could absorb those fees without increasing subscription costs. They would either need to do that for all existing subscriptions, or, they make it an add on service. As an add on, surely they would require XX amount (a given minimum) of L2 subscribers to make it all cost effective and worthwhile for them to do.

There is a very valid reason why LSE and ADVFN sites are plastered in adverts. On the flip side, the more professional services that lack advertising mentality, can only cover costs by charging their customers accordingly. Hence, they are much more expensive to subscribe too.

Serious day traders tend to use DMA (Direct Market Access) style services, in which the order book is all part of the experience. Thus is may be reasonable to assume that offering it as a service outside of the true professional world is going to be a very limited market, customer base wise. Which may also explain why there are few companies around that offer it for London listed stocks.

nicobos

6th Nov '18

Interesting thread.

Can anyone who regularly uses L2 comment on how effective it is for timing entries on small cap shares? and how useful it is as part of their overall strategy?

In addition, does much 'spoofing' occur on the exchange and how certain can you be that orders are real? I don't know the extent to which manipulation occurs in the order book...

Thanks in advance !

Nico

AnonymousUser318975

6th Nov '18

It has it uses of course. However, AIM is full of corruption and legal loop holes can be exploited. E.g. It may be OK looking at the order book and trades going through, but it is within regulations to report a trade late.

Therefore a market maker *could* print all sell trades, whilst holding back printing any larger buys. This can skew what you think is going on. Because once those delayed trades appear (often after hours), it can mean that there has been more buys than sells. Yet the price might well have tanked during the day, as the picture painted was a sell off.

Remember, a large buyer or seller in a small illiquid market doesn’t really want to appear too soon. As they will simply turn the market against themselves and end up paying more or selling for less during the accumulation/distribution of the position.

On London listed AIM stocks, your using a system called SEAQ. Which is driven pretty much by the market makers. So in a nutshell, your in their hands. On larger FTSE style stocks the system is different (SETS), because it matches buy orders direct with sell orders (and vice versa). A few years ago SETS was actually extended to into SETSqx, which kind of sits in between the two original systems.

One thing that many folks fail to realise with small illiquid rampy AIM stocks. Is that any which have the potential to multi bag in a single day or week, also have the ability to fall by the same amount or more.. in a matter of minutes. During which, you may well be sat looking at a L2 screen, knowing full well what is going on. But the ability to exit your position during that fall will be neigh on impossible.

It is usually at that point where so many short term trades, become long term holds for so many inexperienced folks. Usually with a new found interest in some kind of spirituality. Where praying daily becomes all the norm. Firstly for the recovery. But sometime later when that has failed, it is then usually replaced by much more intense praying, in the hope that the trading suspension will eventually be lifted. Finally, when that also fails, the last stage of the praying process, is in the hope that the misses doesn’t b***** off when she finds out you have been a right proper numpty :)

schomosport

8th May '19

So to look at a real case in recent days (3rd May 19), RDSB had put on 45p by lunchtime and I was considering taking profit on a tranche I had just purchased within my ISA. But I didn't, because I couldn't figure if they were going to carry on up or go back down (when I would have bought back in). As it was, I didn't sell (fear of it going on further) and the price did go back down to the opening price. That was a 'lost profit opportunity' of a couple hundred pounds.

So mu question here is, would I have sen the change in direction midday from the L2 trading patterns or am I just kidding myself and that in practice it would take many hours of watching the action to be able to make a profitable call? THat day that was +1.75% and then -1.75%, quite a lot of movement over a single day.

I can't really see a way of doing it with L1 charts, I sometimes make a profit or advantageous entry based on the Google price charts but more often I miss them. All advice welcome!

xcity

8th May '19

If you are good at reading the markets then L2 helps, but it doesn't shout the answer in plain English. If it did that then the movements you are anticipating would already have happened. If you're a trader, it's indispensable but you have to learn to interpret it yourself. You just have more information to help you do it.

ambrosia

9th May '19

Just renewed my stocko subscription, its now £225 whereas my 1st ever subscription was £150. I remember at the time wondering whether I really needed it or not and if it was worth it to me. turns out it was, however you have to wonder how many potential customers walk away when they see the price. if it was my business i'd pursue a strategy of increasing subscribers by dropping the price, if it was only £100 there would probably have 10 times as many subscribers, and once youve got them and theyre relying on stocko youll have them for years.

you could even start them on a monthly subscription, once theyre relying on stocko theyll only leave when theyre finished with stocks and shares

barclays1

10th May '19

In my simple view, On level 2, I can only see value in being able to place an order just ahead of a larger waiting to be filled. Excluding those orders which are off-book which I have no visibility. Have I missed something?

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ADFVN Level 2

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Skinner66

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