Oanda Review

I am from Czech Republic and my broker is Oanda Europe.
My story was started in 2018, when Oanda opened my live account after they deeply check my identity. Nothing unusual. It was my 3rd broker.

My first deposit was 2000,- USD and small testing withdrawal was succesfull, I have no any problems with deposit or withdrawal at all, never.

In February 2020 I have got three short positions on DE30EUR(DAX), all of them in deep drawdown, but I was believed in deep correction because of corona pandemic issued (and I was right). At this time, my deposit was 10.000,- USD rouhgly, and about -4.000USD in drawdown.

In this situation, I was issued buy stop command at DE30EUR chart, this command was immediatelly executed by sudden spike, and guess what happend after that ! My 2.580,- USD position, which I held for 12months(!) vanished without a farewell !!!
(Incident happend one day before OANDA migrated my accounts to a new server, where all logs was cleared, very interesting!)

I was shocked, but OANDAs criminals said : is is normal !!! They "really apologize for the inconvenience" and "highly recommend for you to fill out our Trade enquiries form" . I did it. Reaction ? I wondered, is is a newspeak :

"Ticket (9042) was a Market Order which was placed back on the 2nd February 2019 and had a lot of take profit set up and cancelled due to modification, but the last take profit with ticket number (11030) was cancelled because the Buy Stop order you set up on the 21st February 2020, for 13,563.3 with ticket number (13828 - Buy Stop Order) was triggered at the price of (13,563.4) with ticket number (13830) and was tagged as Buy Market Filled."

Me:
your explanation is complicated and confusing for me and i still do not understand why and how my short trade was closed by "buy stop" on account, where hedging is not allowed. Is it really impossible. Normally, every one "buy" command on this kind of account must be refused by the system.
I did not do any manipulation or modification neither with the trade nor with its takeprofit. Only "buy stop" command was issued, nothing else.
There were three trades on the same instrument, why the trade with biggest value was closed ? I did not touch any of them.
I am asking Oanda for revoke the closing, which was faulty due to system malfunction, I suppose.

Oanda:
I apologize if we confuse you. You are right, hedging is not allowed. Your trade was closed because the Buy Stop order of 1 unit that you set up on the February 21, 2020 for 13,563.3 with ticket number (13828 - Buy stop order) was triggered at the price of (13,563.4) and you have an existing sell market of 1 unit at price 11,186.9 way back February 15, 2019. When you have an existing trade, for example a sell market order, you cannot place a buy trade because if you place a buy trade while you have a sell trade, your trade will be closed because hedging is now allowed.

Me:
I am depply disapointed, I was confident about solidity of Oanda untill last friday, now I am not.
Only tergiversations and no responsibility.
One year of keeping the trade and punping dollars to Oanda. Huge amount of fees and commisions.
There were three trades on the same instrument, why the trade with biggest value was closed ?

Oanda:
I understand that you would like to raise a complaint concerning a closed DAX trade back on Feb 21st.
I have investigated your concerns and my findings on this matter are explained below:
Since OANDA's accounts are non-hedging by default, if you place an order or trade in the opposite direction of an open trade with the same instrument, once it executes, it will partially or fully close the open trade. Any unrealized profit or loss will be settled.
Therefore, when your buy stop order #13830 executed, it closed the oldest trade in the same instrument which was a short trade #9042. Thus, causing the unrealized losses to settle at -US$2580.7364
If you would like to trade using hedging, you will need to create a hedging enabled sub-account. You can visit your account at oanda.com to create one.
I offer my sincerest apologies if the service you have received has not met your
expectations. Please be assure that this is not the level of service that we aim to provide and is not reflective of our usual high standards.
I trust that my explanation has resolved this matter. However, should you disagree with my findings
please contact our Compliance Team at disputes@oanda.com who will carry out an impartial,
independent review of your complaint and provide a full written response as per our Complaints
Policy (https://www.oanda.com/resources/legal/europe/legal/complaints-policy).

Me:
I do not need another explanation, the only thing what I would like is, surprisingly, my money.
Nobody has no clue, how much effort and money I spent for keeping The closed trade during whole year, waiting for deep correction.
(Because, as you say, OANDA's accounts are non-hedging by default. I did not know why, until now.)
And one day before the correction was started, my trade is "mistakely" closed ? (Everyone smell the downtrend in the air at this time.)
Please tell me that it is only nightmare. If You know or not, In my country, such amount is a very big amount.
And i am very disapointed, if such deathtraps are embeeded in brokers system of "my friendly broker".

Oanda:
There are 2 ways on how a trade is being closed,(1) is you manually close the open trade, (2) you place another trade of the same instrument and of the same size but in an opposite direction. For example, you place a SELL trade 1 unit of DE30 and then later on you place another trade of 1 unit of DE30 but this time it is a BUY trade, what will happen is that your existing SELL trade will be closed by the BUY trade.What happened to your case was that you have an existing trade which is SELL with 1 unit of DE30, and this was placed on February of 2019. Then you placed another order which is BUY for the same instrument, DE30, and of the same number of unit, 1 on February 22 of this year. The said order was a BUY STOP order which means it is a pending order, - it is not executed yet. When this BUY STOP order became a market order, a BUY trade, it then closed the SELL trade.There is also what we called FIFO in trading. FIFO means first in First Out, meaning if you have multiple trades of the same currency pair or of same instrument, you must close out your oldest trades before you can close out trades that you opened more recently.
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So this is part of my story, there were some another mailing and complaining, but only result was 100,- USD as recompensation.
It hit me very deeply and still I am not able to trade.

It is on your decision, if you wish trade their "FIFO trading"
("Fascist Incorporated Financial Obstruction")

------------------------------
Good morning,

Please note that the letter sent to you on the 2nd April 2020 was OANDA's final response on this matter.

No further information has been provided that would necessitate a re-evaluation of our decision and as such, we view this matter as concluded.

In line with the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) regulatory requirements, I hereby advise you that if you are not satisfied with the results of my investigation you may refer your complaint to the Financial Ombudsman Services (FOS). Any referral to the FOS must be made within 6 months of the date of this Final Response.

Kind regards,

Abi Leighton
Compliance Associate

OANDA Europe Limited
Main telephone: +44 207 101 1600
www.oanda.co.uk

World's Best Retail FX Platform
FX-Week e-FX Awards, 2016
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:-D :-D :-D

Terrible incompetent customer service - hide behind fine print. Its a scam - an then they hold your withdraw hostage......stay away....they will rip you off!

I write this review with a lot sadness and regret.
I started trading in 2007 and I opened my account with OANDA in 2008.
It's been such a long ride. OANDA used to be a good broker, with a very easy to use platform. A great advantage if you are not familiar with volume and position size in lots, which are fundamental concepts required to trade with a platform like the MT4.
Although it was not anymore my main broker, I still enjoyed used it from time to time and I also suggested it to some of my followers (I share my live trading on YouTube and Twitch).
With the heart full of sadness, I have to say that OANDA is not anymore what it used to be in the past years.
It all started when they introduced the "inactivity fee", which is a fee you have to pay if you don't trade for a period of a month. Since OANDA is not my main broker anymore, I didn't want to face this kind of condition, so I requested to withdraw my money. I attempted to withdraw my money for 3 times, all the requests have been denied after a few days.
I contacted the customer service several times. I had 3 live chats, with the last one that lasted for more than one hour.
I have always deposited with a debit card, linked to my bank account in the UK.
I asked to withdraw my funds and all my requests were always denied because the system wants me to withdraw with an old bank account that I had in Italy, 12 years ago, when I made my first deposit in 2008. I explained that I don't have that bank account anymore and that I don't see where the problem is, since I have deposited with my debit card many times. In addition, I have withdrawn money with the same debit card a few times, in 2015 and 2016. I still have the confirmations in my emails.

For several months I have tried to solve this problem, but without any positive response. The result is that they took more than $100 in "inactivity fees" while I still cannot withdraw money and I still haven't received any answer about how to solve this situation.
What I see, every month, is only the email from OANDA, stating that my account has been charged for inactivity.
I made last attempt exactly one month ago, writing an email to the customer service, explaining my issue and attaching all the previous "live chat" conversations I had before, so they could see that I've been having this problem for nearly a year and no solution has been provided, while they still take my money month after month. I guess I could just open a trade to avoid it, but what difference does it make? If I make money, I still cannot withdraw it and customer service is unable to provide any solution, so why even bother and waste my time?

I'm sorry to say that this is the end of an era. I don't consider the service that OANDA offers up to its previous standards.
I'm sure that my case is kind of unique, but the way the customer service handled it (well, they didn't actually) lets you think. Do you really think your money is safe with them? Well, I don't. Not anymore.

I haven't even had the chance to trade with OANDA, as the day I made my deposit with a pre-paid credit card, it was denied by the broker. This is fine, a small problem (it is stated that they accept credit, debit card and Paypal, but it isn't stated than prepaid cards don't work, and Paypal doesn't either), but the real problem is that the money wasn't deposited back in my account. I talked to my bank and say it's on OANDA's end, and OANDA support say the deposit doesn't appear on their end (however I got a deposit denied message from them). The money is gone, and they aren't being accountable for that.

i recently had a stop hunting experience. on my chart, price didn't reach my stop loss. every day, around NY close, the spreads widen for some brokers. the spread was at least 20 pips for OANDA (for minor cross pair). i believe that OANDA widens spreads to >30 pips duting news events. so OANDA has spreads that are too wide and variable for me. i am looking for a broker with fixed spreads.

Please be careful using their web or desktop platform. Oanda will set you up to fail I had a stop order 10 pips above the market price(limit orders are not allowed for orders above the current price- Only stop orders... Strange Huh). Out of know where my order was filled and i was already in the hole 10 pips down and almost $300. This happened every time I placed a stop order to buy. I opened a chat to customer service to see what happened. I was told due to high market volatility my order was hit. I advised that is impossible because there would have been a very long wick displayed on the chart. I told them it doesn't matter how fast the market, it will 'ALWAYS' show a wick... I checked every EUR/USD chart and the price never reached my order. They then had me pull up another chart called 'ask chart' which has nothing to do with a realistist chart. This is there own in house chart that shows activity of what they do behind closed doors. This is a 100% stop hunt software. I will never use this broker again nor recommend this broker to anyone.

I am a trader for a two years know still in the beginning but i have some knowledge in the mark but evry time when i a place a order the market urns on me for 53 trades know first i thought its my lack of knowledge the i reralized and studied the charts between meta and their webtrader they are playing around with their web trader i see this as a scam i can put in to orders the exact time on the web platform and on meta trader the webtrader always turns after i placed an order and the meta not they are scamming people i will get to the bottom of this

Ive had an account with Oanda for a number of years. But the small leverage options means you have to be very picky about which positions you take in the market. Sometimes i want to use a little bit more risk if im very confident in my setup. But you cant due to the low leverage. thats my decision wether i want to do that or not so it should be left up to me what i trade.

saying that they do have a good charting platform, as they use trading view charts. But again a fault that you cant trade direct off TV you can only monitor positions.

Too many rules and regulations for my liking. But not too bad if you have a big account so average rating

Good broker that has a decent reputation. I haven't experienced any problems with payments or withdrawals and definitely think this is one of the better brokers out there.

Jan 21, 2020 - 3 Stars I used Oanda when I first started trading just over a year ago. I did find the site user friendly and was generally happy. I did however find the bank charges quite high and was disappointed that customer support was not available 24/7 when I had an issue with one of my withdrawals.

Been with Oanda for about a year but trading FX for 5. As a USA client, I was taken away from IC Markets kicking and screaming! Oanda has made the switch for me fairly painless. The spread/commission is good. Really only paying about 2 pips on average. EURUSD is only 1.2 pips. Not bad for a US regulated broker. I have a relationship manager who helps me anytime I need help and responds quick. I have a free VPS that runs my algos on MT4. My favorite part is when spreads widen for news or EOD, they have a limit. This can make Oanda lose money but they do this to protect clients. There have been times when GBP pairs spreads wildly jump over 100pips on other brokers feeds but Oanda only 20 pips. This is especially important if you are scalping a news event and need to know what the spread will be. They will also execute trades faster than most because of their status as a dealing desk broker. I personally have grown to like this model, even though I know they could be taking the other side of my trade. They post their feed live everywhere which is comforting. Anyway, I hope this helps and if you have a question about trading, feel free to message me.