Index linked gilts and broker's valuation

[Spet0789]

Slightly tangential question: index linkers with II (my other broker) always seem to say "This instrument can only be traded via phone", so you had to phone in, right? How much did they charge you, dealing fee wise?

Yes, I had to phone in. They charged me £5.99 (I had already used my monthly credit)

IWeb for index linkers let you put in the order online but say "Your order cannot be completed automatically at this time, but can still be submitted as a negotiated order. ... Your order will be sent directly to our Dealers who will negotiate the best price available for your order in the market at that time."

And actually, part of the reason for my (so far only) small foray into TR24 yesterday was to see how that worked, and the trade happened 7 minutes later, at very close to the price I was expecting (not that gilts are normally volatile minute to minute anyway), and for just the standard IWeb fee of £5....

The agent on the phone gave me an "indicative dirty price". When I said OK, I was put on hold for about 10 minutes whilst the trade was made, then she came back on and confirmed actual values which were the same as the "indicative" £5.99 for the trade seems good to me

I must admit this is all new to me. I second Itsallaguess' suggestion that a walkthrough from the more knowledgable would be very helpful.

viewtopic.php?f=52&t=40044

Neil

HL charge £50 for a telephone trade which is a bit egregious in my view.

[gpadsa]

The two contract notes is bizarre. But are you saying that with x-o you can trade index linked gilts online, live? Like it gives you a quote and 15 seconds to accept it? And don't x-o have a buy-by-amount facility, so if you want to buy £15k of TR24 you simply say "£15k of TR24"?

bizarre is putting it politely but I have got used to it

During this year it has varied: for TR24 IL gilt twice it has been live quote & 15s, another time the website came back with "can't currently get a quote from the market, place a limit order & we will deal it when we can" type message. TN24 conventional gilt was phone-only one time, and limit order a more recent time - not seen it with live quotes.

Yes it is possible to buy a cash amount but I like round numbers (of securities, not cash) & in any case I wouldn't be confident about whether they were going to buy me £15k at clean or dirty price. If the former, having to come up with the extra ~50% cash in T+1 or whatever is the standard settlement might mess up my plans. In fact I must have tried to buy via telephone one time too because I recall asking the dealer whether they meant clean or dirty (as well as pounds/pence) & the response was not entirely clear on either front so I reverted to an online deal.

gpadsa

[mc2fool]

During this year it has varied: for TR24 IL gilt twice it has been live quote & 15s, another time the website came back with "can't currently get a quote from the market, place a limit order & we will deal it when we can" type message. TN24 conventional gilt was phone-only one time, and limit order a more recent time - not seen it with live quotes.

How strange. With both II and IWeb conventional gilts (inc. TN24 & TN25, both of which I hold) seem to always be available "live" but index linkers (inc. TR24) not ever so....

[BondSquared]

Good day to buy linkers as the market is selling off - my personal favourites are IL41 and IL51 for personal investment, both have a negligible tax burden (0.125% coupon) for UK tax paying individuals and can be had for a real yield of 1 - 1.1% (1.2%+ at the lows a few weeks ago), i.e. outperforming UKRPI inflation with a 1% yield p.a. if held to maturity. AJBell allows trading over the phone only but with excellent inter-dealer MTF execution.

[NearlyThere]

HL have the same issue. Will take a little systems work to pull in the index ratio.

It's the same with Interactive Investor. I made my first ever purchase of an index linked gilt (TR26) yesterday. My ii account shows the clean price only in portfolio valuation. I'll send them a message to ask if the index valuation can be added, but I don't hold out much hope.

ii have got back to me with the response I expected :

...You can amend the book cost at anytime, by clicking the little blue pencil Icon next to book cost, if you want to factor in the indexation (dirty price), however we can't amend the price feed to reflect at the dirty price and only the clean price via the London Stock Exchange...

[mc2fool]

ii have got back to me with the response I expected :

...You can amend the book cost at anytime, by clicking the little blue pencil Icon next to book cost, if you want to factor in the indexation (dirty price), however we can't amend the price feed to reflect at the dirty price and only the clean price via the London Stock Exchange...

I take it, from that somewhat mangled phrase, that they're saying the clean, un-indexed, price is all they get from their feed from the LSE so that's all they can show and use. That would, at least, make some sense, although I wonder how AJBell managed to change their system to show the indexed price when Geoff complained to them ... viewtopic.php?p=604777#p604777

Do I also take it from their reply that II show the book cost based on the un-indexed price at acquisition? Or does it show it based on the indexed price and they misunderstood your question and/or just got it wrong in their reply?

Incidentally, I only have conventional gilts with II, no linkers, but on examining their Book Cost and Avg Price I see that's based on just the clean price at acquisition plus the dealing fee(s), whereas on IWeb the Book Cost and Avg Cost Per Share of my linker (no conventional ones held there) is on the full on dirty price, indexed + accrued, plus the dealing fee.

[NearlyThere]

Do I also take it from their reply that II show the book cost based on the un-indexed price at acquisition? Or does it show it based on the indexed price and they misunderstood your question and/or just got it wrong in their reply?

Yes book cost is shown as un-indexed price plus the trade commission. There's no point in me modifying that to the dirty price paid if they can't provide a current valuation in a similar fashion. Ho Hum.

N.

[mc2fool]

Do I also take it from their reply that II show the book cost based on the un-indexed price at acquisition? Or does it show it based on the indexed price and they misunderstood your question and/or just got it wrong in their reply?

Yes book cost is shown as un-indexed price plus the trade commission. There's no point in me modifying that to the dirty price paid if they can't provide a current valuation in a similar fashion. Ho Hum.

N.

Well that at least allows you to see the change in un-indexed valuation, and is better than IWeb which shows the book cost as the actual amount paid for the deal (indexed + interest + dealing fee) but the current valuation just on the un-indexed clean price, so making it look like I'm instantly 35% down!

[air04]

Tradeweb is no good 'cos that needs a login, and yieldgimp seems to have an iframe within an iframe, and with them dynamically generated and nothing in the HTML of the page to indicate where they live, so, unless the inner frame with the table in it has a static address (currently https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... Vi/pubhtml) then that's no good. We'll see if it does....

Anyone know of anywhere else I could get an indexed price from (or full on dirty, including indexing and accrued interest) that might be scrape-able?

On googlesheets..
=query(IMPORTHTML("https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vR_4GyCBHmslcmlLLcBQ-pY9sq9hMWojiuSL4BEowsL9ppwjRa8FiLt0LgfT6IvGTRRuMOwSV_pwXVi/pubhtml","table",1),"select Col2,Col4,Col9")

But note that the html page link can change anytime...

Here's a page with the dirty price. I tried to scrape it in google sheets but couldn't get it to work, was on a very underpowered chromebook though.

https://www.sharecast.com/gilt/United_K ... _Gilt_2024

The below will give the dirty price. It should not matter if the chromebook is underpowered, as the google sheet does a lot of stuff on the server.

=IMPORTXML("https://www.sharecast.com/gilt/United_Kingdom_0_18_Index-Linked_Treasury_Gilt_2024", "//td[text()='Dirty Price:']/following-sibling::td[1]/text()")

=index(IMPORTHTML("https://www.sharecast.com/gilt/United_Kingdom_0_18_Index-Linked_Treasury_Gilt_2024", "table",2),4,4)



To get current prices on my sheet, I scrape from HL(sometimes it does not work, so have Power Automate Desktop(code) to scrape from LSE).

To calculate inflation linked price, I download from DMO once a month and copy to LINK. I then use vlookup etc to get all information.

[mc2fool]

Tradeweb is no good 'cos that needs a login, and yieldgimp seems to have an iframe within an iframe, and with them dynamically generated and nothing in the HTML of the page to indicate where they live, so, unless the inner frame with the table in it has a static address (currently https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... Vi/pubhtml) then that's no good. We'll see if it does....

Anyone know of anywhere else I could get an indexed price from (or full on dirty, including indexing and accrued interest) that might be scrape-able?

On googlesheets..
=query(IMPORTHTML("https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vR_4GyCBHmslcmlLLcBQ-pY9sq9hMWojiuSL4BEowsL9ppwjRa8FiLt0LgfT6IvGTRRuMOwSV_pwXVi/pubhtml","table",1),"select Col2,Col4,Col9")

But note that the html page link can change anytime...

And in fact I've been using that address (directly in Excel) since soon-ish after I posted it above, and it has yet to change, but we'll see...

Here's a page with the dirty price. I tried to scrape it in google sheets but couldn't get it to work, was on a very underpowered chromebook though.

https://www.sharecast.com/gilt/United_K ... _Gilt_2024

The below will give the dirty price. It should not matter if the chromebook is underpowered, as the google sheet does a lot of stuff on the server.

=IMPORTXML("https://www.sharecast.com/gilt/United_Kingdom_0_18_Index-Linked_Treasury_Gilt_2024", "//td[text()='Dirty Price:']/following-sibling::td[1]/text()")

=index(IMPORTHTML("https://www.sharecast.com/gilt/United_Kingdom_0_18_Index-Linked_Treasury_Gilt_2024", "table",2),4,4)

I did actually write a bit of VB to get a dirty price from Sharecast, but as I noted a couple of posts after y0rkiebar's one, Sharecast was missing some of the conventional gilts I hold (which I was previously scraping HL for) and I've since discovered it also doesn't have TR26, so I gave up on it, and on HL, and decided to get all my gilts prices from the yieldgimp pages. If the addresses change I'll just have to update them in my spreadsheets; as long as it's only infrequently that'll be ok.

[mc2fool]

I complained to AJ Bell about this problem and they fixed the it. I complained to iWeb but they refused to fix it. That is annoying. iWeb should give a correct valuation or at least say "price not found". I get dirty prices from Tradeweb, which is the official source for historical prices.

It's the same with Interactive Investor. I made my first ever purchase of an index linked gilt (TR26) yesterday. My ii account shows the clean price only in portfolio valuation. I'll send them a message to ask if the index valuation can be added, but I don't hold out much hope.

Sigh ... I bought my first index linker through Interactive Investor yesterday (my others have been through IWeb).

A rather tedious 17 minute phone call, mostly waiting for the agent to get though to the dealer, and I'm glad he told me and I took down all the details 'cos the contract note and online order info specify only the clean price, with the consideration amount calculated on that, and ascribe all of the indexation to "interest"!

So, whereas the actual amount of accrued interest (as told to me over the phone) was less than a quid the contract note says it's a couple of thousand! At least IWeb get the contract notes right.

Geoff, do AJ Bell? And Neil, did you get a reply from II?

[GeoffF100]

AJ Bell's contract notes were fine.

[monabri]

Sigh ... I bought my first index linker through Interactive Investor yesterday (my others have been through IWeb).

Why not via iWeb - availability or was it simply a case of that's where the money was?

(I've used iWeb to buy TR24 with a view to having a fund available to manually bed and ISA shares at the start of the new tax year to minimise tax unsheltered dividends. It was straightforward.)

[mc2fool]

AJ Bell's contract notes were fine.

Ahhh ... so like IWeb's then, detailing number bought, indexed price and consideration based on those, and accrued interest (and commission), yes?

And their valuations show and are based on the indexed price too ... so, what's dealing index linked gilts like with them? A phone call, or is there an IWeb style ability to put the order in online and they do it whenever they get to it? And if the former, how much do they charge for the trade?

It's the same with Interactive Investor. I made my first ever purchase of an index linked gilt (TR26) yesterday. My ii account shows the clean price only in portfolio valuation. I'll send them a message to ask if the index valuation can be added, but I don't hold out much hope.

And Neil, did you get a reply from II?

Sorry, I see you did, and I even replied to it! Comes from trying to post here while also watching our lasses play footy in Aus.

[Lootman]

Comes from trying to post here while also watching our lasses play footy in Aus.

I thought you told us that you didn't like sport?

Or was that Gengulphus?

[GeoffF100]

AJ Bell's contract notes were fine.

Ahhh ... so like IWeb's then, detailing number bought, indexed price and consideration based on those, and accrued interest (and commission), yes?

And their valuations show and are based on the indexed price too ... so, what's dealing index linked gilts like with them? A phone call, or is there an IWeb style ability to put the order in online and they do it whenever they get to it? And if the former, how much do they charge for the trade?

Yes, the contract notes were 100% correct. I phoned customer services and gave them details of the trade. A piece of possibly electronic paper was passed to the dealers. They made the trade for the standard online commission. My last trade with them was in 2020.

[mc2fool]

Sigh ... I bought my first index linker through Interactive Investor yesterday (my others have been through IWeb).

Why not via iWeb - availability or was it simply a case of that's where the money was?

(I've used iWeb to buy TR24 with a view to having a fund available to manually bed and ISA shares at the start of the new tax year to minimise tax unsheltered dividends. It was straightforward.)

Well the proximate reason was that it was a matter of where I could get the money into. For some frustrating reason my "hub" bank, cahoot, has decided to deem each and every one of my debit card transactions to IWeb recently as dodgy and blocked them, and I've had to spend yonks on the phone each time going through all the security palaver to get them authorised.

It happened again yesterday and the call centre agent said he could see the block and would put me through to security to get it unblocked but warned me there was currently a 20 minute wait just to get through to them. So while waiting I logged into II and, with the same debit card, straight off managed to transfer the same amount into them, so I gave up waiting on the phone for my bank ... to replace it with waiting on the phone for II.

However, I had been thinking of trying out II for index linkers anyway, both just to have that experience, and also 'cos my IWeb account is getting increasingly the larger of the two, and would continue to do so if I carry on transferring bank/b.soc. savings as they mature into linkers there, as is currently my plan.

[mc2fool]

Comes from trying to post here while also watching our lasses play footy in Aus.

I thought you told us that you didn't like sport?

Or was that Gengulphus?

Not sure I ever said that, although it is true that I'm not much of a sports fan or ever watcher in general. But I do occasionally watch the-best-of-the-best events, like the Olympics and other "world class" type events.

[mc2fool]

Ahhh ... so like IWeb's then, detailing number bought, indexed price and consideration based on those, and accrued interest (and commission), yes?

And their valuations show and are based on the indexed price too ... so, what's dealing index linked gilts like with them? A phone call, or is there an IWeb style ability to put the order in online and they do it whenever they get to it? And if the former, how much do they charge for the trade?

Yes, the contract notes were 100% correct. I phoned customer services and gave them details of the trade. A piece of possibly electronic paper was passed to the dealers. They made the trade for the standard online commission. My last trade with them was in 2020.

Sound good. I think I'll drop them an email and ask if that's still the case.

[Lootman]

I thought you told us that you didn't like sport?

Or was that Gengulphus?

Not sure I ever said that, although it is true that I'm not much of a sports fan or ever watcher in general. But I do occasionally watch the-best-of-the-best events, like the Olympics and other "world class" type events.

OK, I think it was when you were asking about things to do in Manchester and you said something about nothing sports-related.

I may have assumed the rest.