Oanda

[shadowninja]

I signed up for their play system. It's all weird compared to Tradindex and IG Index.

And I thought 500 units was a lot. </noob>

Anyone have any comments about the service?

 

[Rhody Trader]

Fantastic system for newbies and small account traders because of the lack of minimums on account balances and trade sizes and no fixed lots. It allows the small trader the ability to customize their risk to the penny.

Charting package is limited, but for someone like me who doesn't really need that much that's not a big deal. The demo is unlimited. Spreads are as tight as you'll find anywhere - except through ECNs at times.

You can't use MT with it.

 

[shadowninja]

Thanks. I am experimenting with the play system. It's a bit different to spreadbetting!

 

[BSD]

Oanda are really fantastic in all respects, great, totally honest people behind the firm, founders Richard Olsen and Michael Stumm and their super friendly and helpful team, with an intuitively understandable platform that offers you all you'll ever need to make money.

Only downside at the mo is that they don't have account insurance yet !!

Certainly hope that's in the pipeline tho !!!

That gripe aside, they and the parent Olsen group are real leaders and innovators in FX, and have accordingly been able to invite the biggest investment of any retail FX operation out there, a cool 100 million.

Acct insurance apart I've been a thoroughly happy client there for almost 7 years.

 

[shadowninja]

Thanks for that. I am slowly getting to grips with the interface. Their charting software is basic but tbh I never used the entire offering available by ProRealTime/IT-finance.

 

[shadowninja]

The more I play with Oanda, the more I realise how huge IG's spreads are! I have a trade that is 8 pips in profit. At IG it would be 10 pips in loss.

Out of interest, if I hold overnight, would I be charged? I am not sure how hold overnight positions on Oanda... there is no "Forward" quote.

 

[BSD]

Ninja, have a look here:

OANDA FXTrade - Interest Rate Calculation

OANDA FXTrade - Continuous Interest Payment

Good stuff.

PS, re overnights or days or weeks or months in a trade, you don't need to do anything, as long as you're in a trade you're in it, and, depending on the pair you're trading, either earning interest or paying it.

 

[BSD]

One thing that's important when trading off of Oanda's charts is to set them to Min/Max mode in the third window next to acct summary, as only that shows true min/max price excursion, as in true highs / lows.

People used to get confused why their stops were getting hit when price seemingly hadn't reached those levels as per candle or bar charts that don't show true min/max price excursion due to spread issues, and in typical Oanda fashion, after we''d been griping about that for a bit, they came up with a fix pretty quickly.

Btw, if you'd occasionaly like a spot of choice charting wise in addition to Oanda's own charts, these people are excellent as well, and it's free:

NetDania ChartStation

 

[shadowninja]

Ah, thanks for the interest links. It seems fairer than IG Index.

Now, what happens with slippage?

 

[Rhody Trader]

Now, what happens with slippage?

It's virtually a non-factor, like trading e-mini contracts in the futures. The system is totally automated, so unless there's a really major move in prices out of the blue, you'll get filled at your order price.

 

[shadowninja]

Oh, cool! That is also why IG's spread is so big: guaranteed stops. I guess this is more important for markets that close overnight.

 

[shadowninja]

Has Oanda died? Can't log in to play account...

 

[shadowninja]

Now it's connecting and disconnecting... not impressed. IG is behaving fine...

ETA: grr. It's pissing me off. Missed an entry as it keeps cancelling my order screen when it disconnects. Has been doing this for the last 10 minutes now.

ETA: wow. this is sh1t. up down up down up down. Never seen this before. Oanda was rock solid up until the last hour.

 

[Depth Trade]

Restart your computer and clear the Cache.


DT

 

[shadowninja]

Thanks for the reply.

It seems fine now, without needing to wipe/restart anything, fortunately. I wonder if it was because there was a lot of movement in the markets prior to the news.

As a general comments, I despair of websites that require me to clear my cache and reboot my PC and hope Oanda doesn't really require me to do this from time to time. That would make it very user-unfriendly; it kind of assumes that you only use their website and nobody else's (as it happens I use about 20 websites daily and don't want to type my password in every time I visit a site)...

 

[Rhody Trader]

Actually, you don't even need to go through the Oanda site to use the platform anymore. They have a desktop ap you can install that will start you up directly into Java without needing to go through the site. I can't recall where it is, but if you look around the site you'll find it.

As for platform interuptions, I've been using Oanda for a number of years now. There have been times when I've experienced interuptions like what you've described. Don't know if that was just me, or if it was a system problem. They have been infrequent at best and I never noticed that it was necessarily around news or anything like that.

 

[shadowninja]

Thanks for your reply. Good to hear it's not common.

 

[shadowninja]

Can't seem to "connect" to Oanda today. Can log in but not do anything. Anyone else experiencing this?

 

[Crap Buddist]

alright myside, do you use the fxtrade desktop launcher?

 

[bansir]

Can't seem to "connect" to Oanda today. Can log in but not do anything. Anyone else experiencing this?

Hi shadowninja,
I've just started using oanda and had the same problem today. I thought the firewall at work was blocking me out but it all came good later on.

First impressions are good but like you I'm struggling with lot sizing due to being used to spread betting. I made about £.07 on my first trade.

Best Regards,
Neil