Release Date: 27-07-2006

This, says TradIndex, part of the European broker Tradition, does away with a laborious sign-up process and the need for extensive credit checks.
Customers can start trading by depositing a minimum of £100 and financial indices can be bought or sold from a £1 a point minimum.
Launched in 2002, the TradIndex.com site only allows trades to be made over the internet and its product range tends to focus only on the most liquid and heavily traded financial markets. Perhaps it can be thought of as a sort of no-frills version of a financial spread betting website.
Even so a wide range of markets are covered. For example, stock indices such as the Footsie 100 and the Nikkei are complemented with access to less common exchanges such as the Milan MIB and the Swiss market.
TradIndex also allows traders to take positions on commodities such as Brent Crude, High Grade Copper, silver, gold and platinum.
In addition, the site provides access to currencies, bonds (10 year UK gilts and US long bonds) and single shares from the major UK, US and continental European markets. Clicking on the names of individual shares provides a snapshot of the company?s performance in recent months including the high and low price positions.
To help investors familiarise themselves with the basics of trading, the website offers a free, no risk index trading simulator with virtual money that contains all the features and functionality of the site's real money trading platform.
On signing up to an account, punters are provided with a notional £20,000 of virtual money with which to carry out trades.
TradIndex says that by introducing the use of a mandatory stop loss, its system completely identifies and limits risks for the investor.
It adds that the mandatory stop loss reduces the initial margin requirement to an absolute minimum making the amount of funds required to trade as small as possible.

Verdict: No frills performers always have their fans and a debit only offering may appeal to certain punters. But wider choice elsewhere.