OANDA FXTrade

Posts: 490 Join date: 2009-05-14 Age: 37 Location: London

I'm starting here the review of OANDA the Forex broker I've been using for a couple of years. I'll give more details as this thread develops..

A few words
- they provide the lowest spreads on most of major pairs : EURUSD 0.9 pips, GBPUSD : 2.5, USDJPY : 1.6. USDCAD : 2.5, and so on, the list is long
- the company is highly capitalized (120Mio if I remember well)
- you can trade any amounts, minimum 1 unit
- the platform is decent, their news aggregator is one of the best I found after the professional ones

A few minus (that don't really affect me)
- they charge their withdrawals (let it compound guys!)
- they charge for their API for systematic trading

That's it for now

Subject: Re: OANDA FXTrade Sat Jul 18, 2009 4:57 am

but you don't have to use the api or system trading right?

Posts: 490 Join date: 2009-05-14 Age: 37 Location: London

No you don't need the API unless you do systematic trading (personally I don't). Actually Oanda is primarily designed to be high frequency oriented.

I forgot to mention that they allow to trade in pipettes ie 0.1 pip

Posts: 41 Join date: 2009-06-29 Age: 48 Location: yalova

Hi Sauros, very nice topic, in Turkey and in many forums aborad I followed, this is the main thema. "Trading yes but with whom", which company is more trustworty. Actually I admit the fact that almost all of the trading company are like "bucket shops" of Jesse Livermore era. In Turkey we have faced companies accusing traders of doing scalping if they win, if they lose everybody happy except the trader. After a search of almost 2 months I decided to work with Oanda, now I have an account with them, yet a game account but I will deposit very soon. It was a nice suprise for me to see this topic,
"Do you know their scalping policy?".
Actually I don't know clearly what is scalping, I read some companies have scalping policy, like pip limits or time limits. Does Oanda have any policy? It will be not nice to be blamed as scalper after hours of work, pain and excitement.

Posts: 41 Join date: 2009-06-29 Age: 48 Location: yalova

Sauros, can you give more details on these 2 points:
How much they charge for withdrawal, % or fixed amount.
And what is API ? Systematic trading is it, automated trading?

"A few minus (that don't really affect me)
- they charge their withdrawals (let it compound guys!)
- they charge for their API for systematic trading"

Posts: 490 Join date: 2009-05-14 Age: 37 Location: London

almbayrak66 wrote:

Sauros, can you give more details on these 2 points:
How much they charge for withdrawal, % or fixed amount.
And what is API ? Systematic trading is it, automated trading?

"A few minus (that don't really affect me)
- they charge their withdrawals (let it compound guys!)
- they charge for their API for systematic trading"

Hi almbayrak66,
Firstly regarding the withdrawals, they apply for non USD accounts the fees below :

Bank Wire Fee
Account	First Withdrawal (Fee) processed within calendar month	Additional Withdrawals processed within calendar month
EURO	€20	Fee + €15
USD	USD $20	Fee + $15
CAD	CAD $20	Fee + CAD $20
CHF	Swf $20	Fee + Swf 20
GBP	£ 10	Fee + £10
JPY	¥2,000	Fee + ¥2,000
AUD	$20	Fee + $20

For accounts in USD, the best is to use paypal (free).
You will find all the details here : https://fxtrade.oanda.com/your_account/fxtrade/withdraw_funds.shtml

Another thing : for the deposits, I know OANDA has some accounts in the US and in the UK for deposits, so we can transfer easily the money (that's new in the UK actually). Now from Turkey, I guess (I'm not sure) your bank will charge you some fees to make a deposit in a bank abroad (I used to pay 20£ or so from the UK).

Secondly, I'm not really an expert on this and don't use them but API are program codes used to send orders to the brokers. They are mainly used for automatic trading (what I called here systematic but that was not totally accurate).

Posts: 490 Join date: 2009-05-14 Age: 37 Location: London

almbayrak66 wrote:

Hi Sauros, very nice topic, in Turkey and in many forums aborad I followed, this is the main thema. "Trading yes but with whom", which company is more trustworty. Actually I admit the fact that almost all of the trading company are like "bucket shops" of Jesse Livermore era. In Turkey we have faced companies accusing traders of doing scalping if they win, if they lose everybody happy except the trader. After a search of almost 2 months I decided to work with Oanda, now I have an account with them, yet a game account but I will deposit very soon. It was a nice suprise for me to see this topic,
"Do you know their scalping policy?".
Actually I don't know clearly what is scalping, I read some companies have scalping policy, like pip limits or time limits. Does Oanda have any policy? It will be not nice to be blamed as scalper after hours of work, pain and excitement.

I would define scalpers as the shortest term players, a few seconds to a few minutes. The scalpers take their profits very quickly (they "scalp" small variations, a few pips) and make a lot of trades per day (so they pay a lot of brokerage fees). To be back to a previous discussion we had, to be profitable they need to have a high % of winning deals (90%). Now it can happen that the brokers don't have the accurate systems to face scalpers (it means the guys send too much orders and too fast, they just don't have the time to hedge them...) so the anti-scalping policy you referred to (actually I've never seen a scalping policy, it would be great if you could give me an example, I'm just curious). The brokers can have the same problems after the economic releases or breaking news : to cope with this they widen dramatically the bid offer or just reject the orders...

Back to Oanda, as I said, they are "high frequency" oriented so they favor the scalp! Their system are designed to cope with heavy statistical arbitrage or arbitrage hedge funds sending loads of orders in a second, the more transactions the better for them (smart guys) and that's the reason why they provide the tightest spreads, living on the number of transactions.

Now, as they are smart guys, I suspect they use themselves trading algorithms and not always hedge their customers orders and are their actual counterparts (like the bucket shops!). But to be frank, I don't think that you or me are concerned if we hold our positions more than 10 seconds.

Posts: 490 Join date: 2009-05-14 Age: 37 Location: London

Hi almbayrak66, another thing :
You mentioned earlier that you used to do mere cash transfers on forex.
I wanted to add that OANDA proposes (you don't need to be a FXtrade customer to use the service) for the cash transfers FXGlobalTransfer http://fxglobaltransfer.oanda.com/
It allows you to exchange a lot of pairs at (almost) the spot level you would get with FXtrade for a flat fee of 20$ for major pairs (EURUSD etc) and 60$ for other pairs.
Personally, I haven't managed to find cheaper to transfer money abroad.

PS : It looks like i'm sponsored by OANDA but I'm NOT !!! Very Happy

Posts: 41 Join date: 2009-06-29 Age: 48 Location: yalova

Hi Sauros, actually I want to deposit fund by credit card and if possible I will ask them to debit my credit card in case of withdrawal (I don't know whether this is possible with Oanda, but I heard some trading company can do). Actually this is the most practical way for traders like me. (I wrote Oanda and will wait their answer)
In my first attempt I deposited by credit card, I faced no problem and no fee, I had no chance to test withdrawal. Actually this was another broker company in forex.

About scalping policy pips or time limits, I red in some forums but there was no broker name, actually no broker would write on their advertise saying that "we are against scalping"

My opinion many of trading companies are not fully "bucket shops", simply they do send the balance to the market, lets say in EUR/USD some of their customer are long some are short, let say the difference is 2M EUR long, trought major banks or broker, the trading company is long for 2M EUR only, actually forwarding all customer orders to the market probably is not practical and profitable for them. Of course they need a sophisticated and on line software for this. Anyway these are good trading companies, some do not even bother to forward balance to the market. Probably these are full "bucket shops"

Posts: 41 Join date: 2009-06-29 Age: 48 Location: yalova

"I would define scalpers as the shortest term players, a few seconds to a few minutes. The scalpers take their profits very quickly (they "scalp" small variations, a few pips) and make a lot of trades per day (so they pay a lot of brokerage fees). To be back to a previous discussion we had, to be profitable they need to have a high % of winning deals (90%)."

Dear Sauros, after reading this I understood that I'm definitly not a scalper, I never had a chance to close a position in seconds, sometimes it takes hours for me to understand I'm on the wrong way. Laughing

Actually it might be good idea to be scalper, 1M usd can bring 200 or 300 usd in 3-4 pips. (not bad)

But I think I read in this forum, "in poker you can win with "all in" many times, but once !"

Posts: 490 Join date: 2009-05-14 Age: 37 Location: London

I read somewhere, I think it was in the New Market wizards book, that they were many ways to make money from the market, but it was very difficult to find just one of those ways and scalping is definitely one of them. Now, I believe that, as written in most of the trading book,that the main thing is to find a style that fits you and scalping doesn't fit me. Back to earlier days, I gave a try to all the styles and techniques I could find (my current trading now being a mix of all these) and that included (shortly)scalping. I even can't remember if I was profitable or not as a scalper, but to me, it looked more like playing video game than trading !!! It was frantic, required full time attention on the screens and good reflexes!

Posts: 41 Join date: 2009-06-29 Age: 48 Location: yalova

"so the anti-scalping policy you referred to (actually I've never seen a scalping policy, it would be great if you could give me an example, I'm just curious)."

Hi Sauros, just for your info, MIG Investment (it is accepted a well known and trustworty broker) of Switzerland applies as anti scalping policy 10 minutes and 10 pips as limits. Any position closing below these limits are accepted as scalping.

Posts: 490 Join date: 2009-05-14 Age: 37 Location: London

almbayrak66 wrote:

"so the anti-scalping policy you referred to (actually I've never seen a scalping policy, it would be great if you could give me an example, I'm just curious)."

Hi Sauros, just for your info, MIG Investment (it is accepted a well known and trustworty broker) of Switzerland applies as anti scalping policy 10 minutes and 10 pips as limits. Any position closing below these limits are accepted as scalping.

OK Great, Thanks almbayrak66! As they wrote on their site :
"Due to the difficulties associated with covering such trades, M I G Investments does not accept scalpers" ... at least they're frank.
Now you won't find for sure these kinds of policy with OANDA or FXCM as they supposed to have the systems to cope with intensive trading

Posts: 3 Join date: 2009-05-28

This is the first time I am hearing about scalping policy. Sauros may be right that their systems cannot talk fast enough with Stock Markets to hedge the trade.

I do not have bloomberg Sad

and hence depended lot on OANDA for news [OANDA fxnews].
https://news.oanda.com/java/news/fxnews.jnlp
But for last 2 months, they have changed something. There is very little news and they are late. By the time, I hear the news markets have already reacted. I wish OANDA gets back to normal way of posting news. It used to be plethora of news. In the morning, you could get good information regarding what happened in the east during night.

I am a new bie in trading and hence evaluating various trading patterns. Using API, you can program your trades and strategies.

Posts: 490 Join date: 2009-05-14 Age: 37 Location: London

buffalo wrote:

This is the first time I am hearing about scalping policy. Sauros may be right that their systems cannot talk fast enough with Stock Markets to hedge the trade.

I do not have bloomberg Sad

and hence depended lot on OANDA for news [OANDA fxnews].
https://news.oanda.com/java/news/fxnews.jnlp
But for last 2 months, they have changed something. There is very little news and they are late. By the time, I hear the news markets have already reacted. I wish OANDA gets back to normal way of posting news. It used to be plethora of news. In the morning, you could get good information regarding what happened in the east during night.

I am a new bie in trading and hence evaluating various trading patterns. Using API, you can program your trades and strategies.

Hi Buffalo, thanks for letting us know about OANDA fxnews tool, it helps! To be frank, it's been a while i have not used it myself.
Regarding API I've heard about Metatrader4 (I use their platform for charting) it's free and you have a programming language included, MQL4. Now I guess if you are into statistical arbitrage where the speed of execution and the relationship with the broker do count, you would be better off with paying API (I've heard about FXSpyder), but actually I'm not sure, just the "there's no arbitrage" stuff...

Subject: Re: OANDA FXTrade Thu Jul 23, 2009 5:18 am

buffalo wrote:

This is the first time I am hearing about scalping policy. Sauros may be right that their systems cannot talk fast enough with Stock Markets to hedge the trade.

I do not have bloomberg Sad

and hence depended lot on OANDA for news [OANDA fxnews].
https://news.oanda.com/java/news/fxnews.jnlp
But for last 2 months, they have changed something. There is very little news and they are late. By the time, I hear the news markets have already reacted. I wish OANDA gets back to normal way of posting news. It used to be plethora of news. In the morning, you could get good information regarding what happened in the east during night.

I am a new bie in trading and hence evaluating various trading patterns. Using API, you can program your trades and strategies.

Hey Buffalo,

what kinda news you looking for? I can send you loads of different news i get every morining by email, or you can check out the blogs lists i posted in the trolly rating section. They have some big names like calculated risk and the big picture which is pretty mainstream stuff that everyone reports on and is on time.

Or conversely you can always adopt to a new trading style that is not so news heavy depending? longer term trend trading maybe? a bit heavier on the technical emphasis?

Just a little food for thought

-snapman

Posts: 490 Join date: 2009-05-14 Age: 37 Location: London

With the recent discussions regarding the High Frequency trades, I've seen in the media that some "guys" (well their machines instead...) do 1,000 trades in 1 second and the speed for an order to be executed is accounted in microseconds. that's 1/1,000,000 seconds. That's far from what I could imagine.
Definitely if Oanda claims they support "High Frequency" trading, we can't be accused of scalping using them...

Posts: 1 Join date: 2011-06-26

Hi
ForexTrading.com offers online leveraged trading in the world's most liquid currency pairs, index and commodity CFDs. We aim to be the trading account of choice for traders who don't want to pay extra for the frills.

Forex Trading

Posts: 4 Join date: 2012-01-12

I know the thread is pre-occupied with scalping and HFT but there are some unique features of the Oanda FX trade platform that traders might like to know about:
1. Weekend and holiday trading
2. No 'lot' concept - trade in any quantity you're comfortable with
3. Interest on client balance calculated continuously, second by second
4. No trader is 'more equal' than another - all clients are given access to the same spread.

Hope this helps!

Posts: 490 Join date: 2009-05-14 Age: 37 Location: London

devshishya wrote:

I know the thread is pre-occupied with scalping and HFT but there are some unique features of the Oanda FX trade platform that traders might like to know about:
1. Weekend and holiday trading
2. No 'lot' concept - trade in any quantity you're comfortable with
3. Interest on client balance calculated continuously, second by second
4. No trader is 'more equal' than another - all clients are given access to the same spread.

Hope this helps!

Thanks devshishya! Your comments are always helpful.
Actually I'm trading now with financial spread betting brokers, that's tax free in the UK!, but still using OANDA platform for charts.
For some reasons I prefer OANDA charts than the ones I got though my Bloomberg terminal (BTW the former is free, the latter is like a grand per month!)

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