Why would the Market refuse a Quote and Deal request on a share?

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25th Jul '22 by Indie

14 comments 480 reads

I've just tried to request a Quote and Deal for Integrated Diagnostics Holdings (LON:IDHC) and got a message that Barclays are not able to process the order at the moment. When I contacted Support, they said that it was the Market refusing the trade.

Possible reasons were:

The company could have temporarily taken themselves off trading - but it looks ok on the London Stock Exchange website.
The stock could be very illiquid - not sure where to check for this, but it's a mid-cap and the share price graph isn't all staccato
Volume too high - but I was buying below the EMS

Any wisdom from the Stocko community?

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About the Author

Indie

Premium Member

I owned shares through a stockbroker for thirty years but from 2023 it's all in my ISA under my control.

14 comments

TheFloatingInvestor

25th Jul '22

30,000 shares traded today..300,000 average per day, which can be seen in the Stocko main screen for the share.

Day's Change -0.04-5.07% Avg Volume 315,378 Open - Close $0.83 - $0.83Range (12m)$0.66 - $1.45 Beta0.937

All looks ok, perhaps the share was in AU, or not the quantity you wanted was available so maybe have another go.

Indie

25th Jul '22

Thank you... What is AU? Investopedia isn't helping here.

Still not letting me proceed...

colin1862

25th Jul '22

AU means shares in auction (happens automatically for shares periodically throughout day). How many shares are you trying to purchase?

TheFloatingInvestor

25th Jul '22

Colin is right...how many you after? It might be that you need to buy in tranches..but today it has 29,000 buys and 1921 sells. I would say you will pay a dealer charge more than once in tranches, so perhaps worth waiting till you can buy what you are after, as i think the market maker cannot for fill your order ATM.

ADVFN might be worth a shout for you to get (if you don't already have it), it will help you track share dealings and execute your trade timings. 'The Naked Trader' website can get you a discount on ADVFN. I use the 'Silver' £17.37 per month.

I use ADVFN and Stocko as my two main tools. Hope that helps, and apologies if am telling you how to suck eggs!

KevinS1

25th Jul '22

Hi Indie,

I believe the MM's are only obliged to deal in the EMS by phone - not on-line trades.

So sometimes for a variety of reasons you may not get a price. Normally (if its a smallish volume) repeat orders normally ends up at some point with an offer coming back, but this can take a while.

It has only ever happened to me on very small cap stocks and/or illiquid stocks or if I have been looking to trade large volume. It can be frustrating if after all of your work you want, and are keen, to pull the trigger.

For bigger than EMS volumes 95% of the time you still get a price, but often it can be outside the normal spread.

If I am desperate to buy/sell I will normally do a telephone order - but this can cost a lot more - at HL dependent upon the amount of trades that month the price will be £25 for telephone vs £5/8/11 electronically.

sharw

25th Jul '22

I think the clue is the $ sign on the share price. It is traded in London in $ and Egypt in EGP

I have 3 broker a/cs and tried them:

xo - "It is not possible to trade this security in an ISA. For further assistance please contact the Dealing Desk" (in contrast to the ISA box ticked on the stocko page).

iWeb - "We could not find anything matching your search term. Are you sure it is not an international equity or a fund?"

ii - success! for a nominal £2,000 it would allow me to buy (I didn't) 2921 @ $0.8144 - in my ISA.

Conclusion - every broker is different on this one.

Indie

25th Jul '22

Thanks, sharw, that's in depth - I appreciate it. I have bought it before in the same ISA with Barclays, and the support desk didn't say there was any reason they wouldn't buy it for me. They were clear that it was the Market that was refusing the trade.

Indie

25th Jul '22

Hi colin1862, thanks for the clarification.

I would be buying £2,000 which I think will be between 2,500 and 3,000, under the EMS of 4,000

Indie

25th Jul '22

Hi TheFloatingInvestor, you're definitely not teaching me to suck eggs, and even if you were, it would still be good stuff, thanks!

Indie

25th Jul '22

Thanks KevinS1, v interesting. Always learning how the MMs work.

TheFloatingInvestor

25th Jul '22

Ok Indie if you have bought it before then should go through again when shares available, you are not asking for an earth shattering quantity. Maybe put a limit order on with your broker to buy at an agreed price and see if it goes through.

Good luck!

Tommy H

25th Jul '22

Hi Indie

If you look at the top of the page (assuming you have £ IDHC open on its main page)

Just under the price and movement for the day it has the line

"Last Trade" and "Full Quote"

Click on Full Quote

It will give you the current "buy" and "sell" order sizes which the market should be taking.

It is not perfect but should give you an idea at what size order you can place and the likely price you will be asked/offered.

The other option is effectively to go for a Level 2 type system, I don't personally have as I do not buy or sell enough, but something like SharePad where you pay more but get a lot more information including what is going on in the market so what buys and sell offers are out there, if any

https://www.sharescope.co.uk/s...

I would add that I am with IWeb, cheap and cheerful, and similarly there are times you just cannot get a quote one way or the other, and no explanation, just there is none.

With regards to the "auction periods" these are at 08:00-08:30 and 12:00-12:30 from memory.

The other thing that can remove or reduce availability is if the price movement is greater than a certain range, you usually see a news message saying "price monitoring" is in place for this share.

Cheers

Tommy

Indie

25th Jul '22

Thanks, Tommy H, that helps with where to look, although I'm sure I was looking for less than those amounts so I'm still confused over why my requests aren't going through. Ah well...

Maybe one day I'll dealing in amounts large enough for Level 2 to be worth paying for - dare to dream!

colin1862

25th Jul '22

Put in a dummy buy of 100 shares and if it goes through don't accept it. Then repeat with 500 and if accepted keep repeating till you find the highest online amount

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Why would the Market refuse a Quote and Deal request on a share?

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Indie

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