Where to find free Bid/Ask Spread (European markets including SIX)

Is there any place where I can find bid/ask spread information for SIX and other European markets (as live as possible). As far as I can tell (please correct me if I am wrong) my broker Degiro does not provide bid/ask spread information. It only provides information on the last trades that were made. I understand that for example InteractiveBrokers provides information of the form Ask: 3.8420 x 100,000, Bid: 3.8295 x 11,819. Which shows how much stock is guaranteed to be available at what price for how many units before the price moves (important caveat the data is delayed by 15 minutes I believe). Is this kind of data available for free and for what stocks/ETFs.

I would be interested in data on for example:
Vanguard ESG Global All Cap UCITS ETF (USD) Acc (SWX | V3AA | IE00BNG8L278 | CHF ) traded in CHF on SWX . (Degiro calls the swiss stock exchange SWX even though it is now called SIX).
(For some reason Degiro has no historical information at all on this ETF, not even the last trades. I asked support about this and they blamed their third party historical data provider.)

Swissquote offers real time market data. It’s free in that there is no fixed price, but you pay an extra CHF 0.85 per transaction for it. This is how it looks like for your ETF in the app (pricing, orderbook and past trades):



Does swissquote charge just for having an account open (unused) or could I open one for free (never making transactions) so that I can get some bid/ask estimate there to use on Degiro. Also do I read it correctly as saying that I am guaranteed to be able to buy 100000 units at 4.8675 (at that moment)? And if I were to offer in between the bid and the ask nothing would be traded unless/until some other investors / market makers change their sell order?

They have zero account maintenance fee, but I assume they will close your account eventually if you not only never trade, but never even pay-in anything.

And yes, orderbook said what you think it said, but that doesn’t mean that anything is guaranteed. And for an ETF, you’ll likely get any order at market price filled by the market maker immediately. I would guess the only two retail order in that book are the ones at 4.80 and 4.75, rest looks like big block orders from said market maker to provide pricing.

What do you call “market price”? The 4.8745 listed above? Why would it not fill at the lower price of 4.8675 which was at that moment being offered according to the Bid/Ask.

I meant a limit order set between current bid/ask (as in the current market price, ignoring the last actual trade at 4.8745 as shown) would be filled almost immediately anyway, as the market marker is continuously (every few minutes, not necessarily real time) adjusting their pricing, with a high likelihood that your price would be met at some point anyway, and might also simply choose to fill your specific order (as that is his job after all). But, to be clear, technically without any change that order would not be filled as there are no at market orders open (and it would not fill at 4.8675 as your offer would be slightly below that, if I understood you correctly).

Anyway, what makes you so very concerned about bid/ask spreads? The only thing you need to make sure is that you buy during the open market (and not in pre-/after-market), and that there is in fact a market maker (to avoid at market orders getting filled way out of fair pricing). Apart from that, the exact timing and spread is pretty much irrelevant.

I agree an offer in the middle of the spread would simply not fill. But if you made any offer above or equal to 4.8675 it would have filled at that price (and not any higher one such as 4.8745 which is the price listed in bold for some reason and is I guess what you called the “market price”.). I just want to understand. Specifically I would like to see whether for these less liquid ETFs (less compared to the ones in USD and EUR) the price would shift significantly when buying a large fraction of the daily total trade volume say for example 50000 CHF worth. (What does “Volume” indicate on SwissQuote. It is very low even if it indicates just the stocks traded that day. Is it in units of thousands or millions?)

I always use limit orders so I can’t accidentally buy at a very unfair price of course but I could end up filling only a fraction of my order.

I know some people are not that concerned with one time losses below 0.1% but I am just interested and honestly putting in some time once to understand these things could end up paying off over a life time.

I assume it varies quite a bit, but in my experience you typically see pretty much a CHF/USD 100k block order from the market maker at the tightest (fair) spread, with a multiple of that at one or two wider (and not so fair) spreads.

Never seen a serious ETF at an official listing without market maker, but I would not be surprised if it exists. For shares, there certainly are some with no market maker and very limited liquidity.

It’s because it’s the last traded price, and by standard that is the one quoted (pretty sure you can change to bid or ask in the settings).

Volume is quantity, not turnover, in actual volume (no thousands/millions). So yes, your ETF has been traded today for about 1k volume or CHF 5k turnover. But still, for up to a CHF 105k order you would get a fair price (or at least the tightest spread of about 0.25%) without moving it yourself.

A trading account costs min. Fr 15 per quarter (plus VAT). I assume they’d want to cash this money in 4x a year.

As far as I know without actually testing myself, if you have no holdings in Swissquote securities account, you pay 0 custody fees. But I don’t know if they would close an inactive account.

I have an account with some money on it ( > 1k) and I don’t pay anything. Still waiting to invest it or move out… It’s been two years, but I was an investor for more than 4.

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FWIW, that stuff is usually way more complicated, at least in the US (but maybe the swiss market is simpler :slight_smile: )

Sometimes, it’s possible to have non-lit orders (e.g. not visible in the book), or your broker might send your order elsewhere for price improvement (with usually some payment for order flow).

So you could be filled immediately with a mid-price limit order.

They are not exactly less liquid. The liquidity is there, provided by market makers. It is just not many actual trades happening. At the moment shown on the screenshot, you can buy ca. 1.5 million CHF worth of this ETF. And if you take some liquidity, market makers will almost instantly add more!

I can confirm this from personal experience. And they seemingly don’t close the accounts either (it’s been a few years now).