Oanda Reviews

Oanda will tell you they have no problem with it or scalping for that matter. But they will have a spread of .9 pips and execute your trade for 2.9 pips off of quote and then on the back end get ya for another 2. They seem to have no problem executing a trade at the quoted price when in the red. now in their traders bill of rights they claim everyone should be like them and be fully "100% automated (instant execution and settlement)" and you the trader should not have to put up with anything less.

They say they have transparent trading and they "work to eliminate the hidden processes in pricing and execution that exists elsewhere in the forex market" lol RIIIIGHT... .9 = 6

They say "access to the forex market is overwhelmingly controlled by a handful of market makers whose intervention does not act in the best inerest of traders"- they should know, they are one of the biggest ones. .9 = 6

They say " execution and price are a function of the MM's greed" - yes it is and they do it well (.9pips = 6pips)

They also say that "retail traders accepting these "bad practices" only perpetuates the problem". and i do believe that one. why do we have to accept this poo? if their were no retail traders they would have to feed on each other.

I could go on and on about stuff they say the OTHERS do, and yet they do it the best. but i still have an account with them. why, because i can still make a profit and i don't have enough evidence to cause them pain yet. give me another week.

Hey, btw did you all know that $148 really is $99 LOL

I rated them a 2 because they are not the worst.

Overall, if you're looking to trade the Forex, I recommend using Oanda.

Their analysis tools are great... if you can understand what they all mean :). Their charting platform is decent, though not very configurable and not as full-featured as MT4 or some others. If you're trading the daily, 3 hour, or 1 hour timeframe, especially on a smaller account, choose Oanda. Their tight spreads and appropriate risk management will keep you in the game. Ignore reviews here that talk about getting margin-called and the like... if you're leveraged so highly that a 200-pip movement gets you margin-called, of course you're gonna get screwed. That's just a lack of risk-management. If you want to make 2-5% on your account per week or per month, then you're more on track, and Oanda will suit you well. Note that making 5% per week will grow your account by 1,260% by years end. That is, you could turn a $1,000 account into $12,600. Set a reasonable goal, trade with reasonable targets and stops, and use Oanda's infinitely adjustable lot-sizes to manage risk appropriately, and you may be one of the forex traders who actually makes it.

I first started out with them using a stop loss but after awhile I had to literally stop using one because 95% of the time I was stopped out. I was using around a 30 pip one. Afterall, one is frowned on if one does not use one because one is told one will loose all his account if one does not. One of my trades with a stop loss was stopped out by the market moving within a pip or so past my stop loss and of course immediately went the other direction. The market did not move there on other brokerage charts. It looked so suspecious that I complained with no resolution. For the market to have moved to that peticular pip especially with no S&R present or near and immediately change directions had an odds of one in a million. I knew right then I was being hunted! So, now with no stop loss I finally started making a profit. But wait! that did not last for long. What else could it be? It was Oanda's very sneeky Margin call policy. Their policy is so manipulated that they have to have math calcultors on their site for their clients to use to figure a margin call, profit, units available, etc. God forbid if one did not gratuate from college!! I went to college, so I wipped the sweet off my brow.

Anyway, what happened next is the margin calls started coming in. By the way, on a pratice account I had around a 95 % positive trade record. But when I went live with Oanda's platform, FO-GET ABOUT IT! Ok! so now that the margin calls started coming in it did not make sense. My trades were not moving THAT much. So I started taking a closer look at the Margin call policy and low and behold I found out that their policy is that if ones trade moves around 50% of ones margin used then one gets the big MC. In all my years of trading I have never seen a margin call this tight with any other broker. For example: If your primary account currency is USD and your balance is 400.00, the pair is GBP/USD, opening rate is 2.0000, you are buying, using 10,000 units, margin ratio is 50:1, your margin call rate will be 1.97979 and your loss will be $202.10. Thats half of your account margin lost. The market moved 203 pips to hit the MC. But that is SMALLER than the range of the ADR of the GBP/USD pair.

So :I asked Oanda about this. What was their excuse? It was that they didnt want their traders to loose their whole account funds because the trader would not have any funds left over to keep trading with them. Well, this touched my heart so much that I had to get my Violin out and cry in my beer. Not really. hee hee. It really sounded like a lode of crap! What really is going on is a sneeky way of taking your money. Let me explain. Each currency pair has its own average daily range (adr). The pairs volitility will move up and down inside this range on the daily chart. It will hit a high and a low point. Oanda's margin call being soooooooo tight within this range one will suridly get hit with a MC if the trade goes against you with no stop loss. Ones trade should be able to BREATHE in this range. In other words be able to move throughout the range without getting stopped out by the MC while also not using a stop loss.

If one is trading WITH the trend on the weekly and daily chart the market can move against you a couple of hundred pips or so depending on the currency pair and USUALLY reverse and move in your favor again. So your trade needs this room to breath and should not get a MC. One could use a stop loss outside the adr to avoid the stop loss hunting but if hit it will be a big loss but so is being continuously stop loss hunted. The only way to keep this MC from happening is use a tight stop loss near your enter and get hunted, or adjust the amount of units and or leverage used. About half or less of your units and or a smaller ratio of leverage, say from 50:1 dowm to 20:1 or more. Ok thats fine but what happens is that your profit per pip drops to a rediculous amount to the point that there is no point in even trading in the mini market. One is forced to use large amounts of capital in your margin account. So one in the mini market is forced to gamble with this around 50% of your account margin call business. You could use a stop loss to prevent this whole thing but we all know about the stop loss hunting gamble. If one wants to invest in FX on the long held trades (with no stop loss) you will probably get a margin call. Scalping may only be a way to make a profit at these odds.

I argued with Oanda about this whole MC business and they said that they can't keep adjusting the MC to fit the ADR of each currency pair. What I understood them to say is that it would be too difficult. But they have these math calculators for every little thing as mentioned above so, I guess their computers would get exhausted and burn up if they had to do all that computing. God forbid! The other day I had a trade move within a PIPETTE (INCREMENT OF A PIP) of my take profit point then shot back the other direction into a MC. This would not have been suspecious except that this happened two days in a row. Either the price was manipulated by Oanda or everyone should kiss my butt cause I am a Freckin market genious! :I can predict down to the pipette where the market is going to go. Just kidding! And the positive reviews of Oanda on this site make me want to FROW-UP. Either these people work for Oanda, have little experience in trading FX, or have the IQ of a monkey. Probably the first two.

The answer to getting around the FX-RATS and all this could be to NOT use a stop loss, only use a broker that has a loose margin call with more breathing room or one that stops at zero funds. It will be a gamble of course if your trade keeps going against you and you loose all of your account. It will be less of a gamble if you use a currency pair that has a daily ADR that will give you plenty of breathing room far from the MC point. The Adr should be much smaller than the MC range. Also, one needs to still have funds in the account to recover if the MC is hit. As of this date because of Oanda's MC policy my account funds are $6.93. I lost it all because of deciding not to use a stop loss and their rediculous MC got me. Since Oanda has kicked me out of trading with them for arguing with them I am looking for a broker that will let me have a reasonable Margin Call and let me BREATHE!

Other than that, good customer support and good all round service.

Recommended.

IMO the biggest PRO of Oanda is the ability to dictate whatever lot size you want even weird lot sizes like 25000 or even 21000. This is very important to me so when I feel very confident on a trade I increase my lots and decrease it on riskier trades. Many people say that the widening spreads is a CON, sure it is but most of us don't really trade on the news (for me personally its gambling) and under normal market conditions they always offer a consistent 0.9pip for the EUR/USD. Another CON is ease of funding, I wished they had credit card funding but its not a big deal. Overall the best broker I have tried and I have tried FXCM, Forex.com, Alpari, MGForex.

Spreads also widen before and after figures - which is understandable. However, the degree to which it widens is off the charts...believe me I've been on the other side for 20+ years and no banks will go that far unless it's in panic mode like 9/11 or other cases where liquidity really dries up. Also, normalization of spreads are way slower than other brokers. And on Friday's after 4 PM and Monday morning's in Asian market, Oanda is virtually untradable with their 10+ point spreads. C'mon, the real market isn't that way and we all know it.

(Oh and by the way, you get stopped out on your position in Oanda if their spread touches your order no matter how wide they may be. Even if the real market traded no where near the price.) For some reason, Oanda has a sort of cult following where loyal users rave constantly about them...WAKE UP PEOPLE! Just because the platform is user friendly, it doesn't mean it's the real thing.

To be fair, if you are a swing trader making trade decision only once in a while, most of the things I've said shouldn't bother you. But if you are a spot trader/day trader looking to job/scalp the market like myself, RUN! As far as you can.

I still feel like an enormous dufus tolerating Oanda for this long. Just keep 10 bucks in their FXTrade account to access their chart (which is still sub-par but better than nothing) and their new News service (which is not bad).

The advantages of Oanda seriously outweigh the spread increase when the news hits. Great execution, stable platform that can be accessed from any computer with java. Financially sound company, which should rank very high on the list of importance. Great spreads during regular times, most notably the 1.2 pip spread on the Eur/Usd. Ability to easily scale in and out of trades. There is no perfect retail broker out here, but I beleive Oanda is the best.

90% of traders fail due to their own actions in the market, yet the blame usually falls on the broker in some shape or form. 50/1 leverage should be more than enough for any trader that wants to have a growing equity curve, the brokers you should not trust are the ones that lure new traders in with things like 400/1 leverage. Anyone who feels they need that much leverage will not stay in this business long. Proper money management equals longevity in this business, not pulling the trigger and hoping for a 100 pip bar using 400/1 leverage.

If you are not trading with the numbers you are trading with your emotions, and you will lose. Anyone who is sincere about you making it will suggest less than 50/1 leverage for a new trader, and a good trader shouldn't need any more than that.

Alright, I just felt that needed saying, overall I would recommend Oanda to any new or seasoned trader.

These companies that charge that kind of money to trade are hitting you, for example, with a 30-50 pip loss on a small 10 lot before you even get out of the gate. Amazing! This is on par with the volume commission game Vegas ....I mean Wall Street has done for years.

If you're a successful day trader your trade costs are your biggest factor between winning or losing. Oanda may have a few faults, but when I compare those few to the absolute best transaction costs in the Forex market today, I'll throw my hat in with them every time. My money's with Oanda and I have nothing but praise for those people.

I've been a commodity trader for 22 years, so I understand a little bit about commissions and cost of doing business. The Forex market is so new and new traders can be so very gullible in thinking this is the way it has to be. Traders are not vocal enough with their money and so these high operating costs become acceptable. In this modern electronic age those costs are ridiculously unacceptable and you should vote with your best interest in mind, not hand holding.

Traders started Oanda not commission artists.

Thanks Oanda.

So then how do they hedge you? They internally match your order. Don't be fooled, Oanda putting their spreads to 15 and 20 at news time is NOT due to forex market conditions but due to the weakness in their systems. Inter bank spreads don't go that high. I guarantee it. I have access to 30 actual bank feeds and i have watched them. Widen they do. But widen by 20 they do not. Typically around 5 to 10. If they really stood for traders rights, they would have changed the weakness in their system and worked with news traders, instead of making an enemy out of them.

They really missed a great opportunity to sign and seal their position as the "peoples broker" instead they have now become the biggest hypocrites. And their latest trick of slipping orders by up to 40 pips at news time relegates them to being just like all the rest. Mark my word. There are brokers out there right now eagerly working away to deal with the shortfall that will allow news traders. I predict this new breed of broker will emerge to dominate the broker market. To Oanda I say "Talk is cheap! Why did you not work with the people who you claim to protect the rights of? News traders have rights too!"

Cons:
Big interest rate spread - bad for carry trading.
Extremely wide spreads during news. 20+ pips in some instances. What sucks is that even if you are not trading news, a lot of times your stops will get hit (and limits will not get it) on Oanda's price feed because of the widened spread. For news trading or scalping go with PropFX (if you have the $$$) or no dealing desk at FXCM if you don't.

I could go on but if you are a serious trader interested in a professional level trading platform and honest dealng, ignore the amateur slams and check out OANDA. You won't be sorry.

Minimum of $0 to open an account and a minimum of $1 per trade.

The spreads widen a little at news times in order to reflect the market spread situation. Typical is eurusd 1.5->3.5 pips. This is much better than many other brokers who either prevent you from trading news completely, whose platforms go down or lock up, delay and requote the prices or widen their spreads to tens or even hundreds of pips. Oanda offers the best of realistic expectations.

Possibility to trade gold and silver a definite plus.

BIG PRO: Their spreads are the lowest I have seen and they only fluctuate during the weekends, sleepy markets, and immediately before major economic releases when the market liquidity dries up - and this is totally understandable.

BIG PRO: Their trading platform is extremely easy to use with a chart that ALWAYS provides accurate real-time service.

BIG PRO: You can access their trading station from ANY computer that supports java.

Pro: All market orders get hit - regardless of market movement. I have always had quick order fills - and if the market moves to give me a better position after I click enter - I get the better entry point. Bottom line - their order matching system is totally fair.

Pro: You can easily open EUR or GBP accounts.

Con: They do not offer phone order service.

On good side: can trade pennies to develop strategy and consistency, can trade natively from Mac.

Not staffed 24/7
I called once on a Sunday not knowing their hours and was hung up on by crabby employee.

1. No trailing stop!
2. Spreads widen from 3:45 PM Friday to 8PM !!?? on Sunday to TEN PIPS. This has caused my limits not to execute and stops unnecessarily triggered on four occasions.
3. No phone orders accepted.
4. Low leverage.
5. Light weight charting.

Now while I may be able to live with the points 4 and 5 the first 3 are truly damaging in my opinion and until these are fixed I am moving elsewhere.

Overall, OANDA is the best so far. I stopped using other 3 yet. (CMS, Forex.com & FXCM)