Oanda historical spreads - Really?

Bill Carson

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Oanda, as you would understand, like to promote their competitive spreads and one of the tools they use is the historical spreads they display here http://fxtrade.oanda.com/why/spreads/recent

And "In keeping with our value of transparency, OANDA publishes our spread data in an easy-to-understand graphical format."

Now, I've looked at this a few times and I'm pretty sure I understand what is suppose to be going on here but something smells a bit fishy. Yesterday I had a demo trade in on the Sterling and it got stopped out at 18:30 Sydney time. No big deal, its a demo and I'm trying to refine a strategy.

The spread had blown out to 20 pips. Once again, no big deal its a demo and its best these things happen here.

In doing the failed trade post mortem I noticed that Oanda were claiming that the historical spread was a maximum of 1.8 pips at 18:30.

How could this be? 20 pips in FXTrade and 1.8 pips in the historical spread.

I sent off an email outlining my concern and received a reply telling me how to use the tool.

Tonight I thought I'd check it again before posting. The historical spread page has changed and it is now showing the correct maximum spread of 20 pips. Was it changed because I said something? I don't know.

I stand to be corrected but this looks dodgy to me, posting a low spread that would reflect Oanda in a good light and then amending after someone has caught them out. There may be a reason why this happens but I can't imagine what it would be that is why I asked Oanda first before posting. But since I didn't get a satisfactory reply I thought I'd throw it over to the board.
 
For some reason I pasted the screen shots to a word doc and now I've copied them to paint to get it into an uploadable format. Not as clear as I would like it but hopefully it can be read.
 

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These may be easier to read. If I'm wrong can someone please point out my error.
 

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