Oanda Reviews

Basically I'll just confirm what most others have already written: Oanda has good execution and some nice features, but their spread widening that happens so frequently takes them from being a potentially excellent broker to being clearly below average.

Spreads widen not just at news. Even when there's no news, if even the slightest hint of volatility appears in the market, spreads immediately double or triple, and stay that way for a long time. Often for a good 20-30 minutes or more. Of course their spreads at news are patently ridiculous of course, but again, I'm not even talking about news; just regular trading.

Bottom line Oanda is still a bucketshop. They make money when you lose. They (or anyone else) can try to spin doctor that fact any way they choose, but it doesn't change anything.

I opened the Oanda account in Singapore. Initially was quite good as the spread is good but actually they use low spread to attract you but they will have very wide spread during news to stop you out.
My friend was stopped after weekend ( 30 pips away from other broker) but FXCM still remain open position. When news is out wide spread will remain for quite some time but othe broker is only one min. Think twice when you are day trader.
Platform disconnected very frequently.

What appeared to be a good broker gone bad. Unusually high spreads are now a thing of the norm. Even during high volume. Interest rate payout changes for some higher interest pairs (not in traders favor of course). Used to like them, now moving accounts to other brokers that are now clearly better. Use ECN broker, take it from me. My recommendation is to stay away from OANDA.

I allready have 4 months of live trading with Oanda and I simply love them! The execution of orders is very fast and I have never had any slippage even on news. The spreads are good. I did not withdrowed money yet but I think will not be a problem when the time come.
I use their own platform Fxtrade and I like it. You can also customize the platform very easy and also can manage your account using sub-accounts.
Very good and reliable broker.

Latest event with Oanda FXPlatform: they removed option for currency prices to be displyed in 4 digit format. I have been wondering what pourpose that correction may have. Maybe I got useto 4 digit and I notice couple of mistake I allready made.
Great move Oanda, your Resume dosen't look good.

The financial management is not very professional and very slow. Live Help is not competent at all.Probably outsourced to India or so.

carlopacot, Dallas

You are 100% correct! Look, people, I've tried other brokers, including so-called STP brokers. OANDA is the best - they're honest, no games, plus they pay you interest - how many brokers do that??? Believe me, put on some CARRY TRADES - you earn interest plus the profit from the trade! THAT"S how to make money in forex!

2011-03-30 5Star Several people here claim Oanda hunts stops - I'm sorry but you're wrong. OTHER brokers have their "virtual broker plug-in" from Boston Technologies that deliberately creates spikes - but Oanda doesn't play those kinds of games. BTW, I'm starting a write-in campaign to the CFTC to BAN that software from American forex firms. Perhaps BT might be persuaded by a little CASE-ACTION LAWSUIT!! What do you FPAers say? You with me?

Oanda is one of the very few HONEST brokers out there. I admit, I left them because their fxtrade platform sucked - but they now have MT4 and they don't play stupid games others play. ALL my indicators and EAs work just fine.I went back to Oanda gladly.once they had MT4.

2011-03-02 5Star I originally started trading FX with Oanda. Having tried several brokers ( all STP brokers, BTW), I'm going back to Oanda. They now have MT4, they're honest, no games, what you see is what you get. Their spreads are just as good as the so-called STP brokers I tried , with no added commissions, plus they pay interest , which nobody else I tried did.

Oanda , a really great forex broker with tight spread,deposit and withdraw via paypal is very fast

I have been trading on an Oanda FXtrade practice account for the past 6 months. The practice has been invaluable. You can practice for as long as you wish.
I recommend using FXtrade to practice because it forces you to do and understand your own technical analysis. This is due to the fact that the platform is somewhat minimal and doesn't offer too many features.
I may try MT4 in the future, but I got used to FXtrade.

I will be starting a real money account with Oanda shortly. I hope I can be half as successful as I was with play money.
They didn't seem to be hunting my stops in practice!

If you're interested in exotics, that is another reason to consider Oanda. They have many pairs that aren't available at other brokers.
The spread is not as good as the major pairs, but it's not terrible either. Especially if you work with people in emerging markets and can gather insights for a more long term approach.

This Broker is the best one out there. Low spreads stable Platform and Friendly customer service. you can trade Via MT4 or if your at work on stuck in traffic you can use Fxtrade and the I phone Version.
I also trade off the Andriod platform when i up late at night in bed. Most traders Complain about spikes their Not from Oanda i've seen Spikes from Other Brokers and it not appear On their Charts.
And if your A Newb setting a 30 pip stop loss trying to predict a Top Or Bottom, You are a foul who will soon depart from your money. My Stoploss are around 50-75 pips and Are always Behind a Support line.

I have been with Oanda since 2006. I have blown several accounts in the past with them but that was mainly due to lack of experience, lack of trading capital and lack of discipline. Now though I have been making good money with them steadily.

I have made dozens of deposits, several withdrawals, chatted many times with customer service and over all I can say is that Oanda is a great, great Broker.

I only have two complaints, one is their Android app which disconnects all the time from their servers and second, the difficulty to send and withdraw money since my local account is in Mexican pesos. I have to send/receive funds through a UK account that I have because deposits can only be done in main currencies i.e. USD, GBP, EUR etc.

Moving money between MEX and the UK is expensive and slow but its worth it when you have a good FX Broker

I have had a live FX Trade Account with Oanda for several years. I recently added their MT-4 platform, too. I have never had a problem with a trade and the trades are virtually instantaneous. They are the only FX broker I know of that pays interest on cash balances. They are the best FX broker I know of.

I have been using Oanda live for 6 years now. I have never seen or heard of half the problems most here are talking about. I withdraw funds once a month and I am profitable with them. Unlike most of the other truly messed up brokers out there and i have tried many of them. Only thing i can say to those that complain here is LEARN HOW TO TRADE before blaiming the broker . if i could give a 10 star rating i would that is double the 5 star allowed.

The people that are screaming scam in this forum I think will need first learn to trade FOREX before blaming the best retail broker around. Just because you loss and has no clue what you are doing does not mean the broker is a scam. Use their practice account it's free and unlimited. Trade with lower leverage and lot size. You can customize your lot size with OANDA which can't be done with other brokers. If you do your research, you will find that OANDA is ranked with the top brokers (UBS, Deutche Bank, etc.). Learn HOW TO TRADE AND YOU CAN WIN WITH ANY BROKER, BUT YOU HAVE A BETTER CHANCE OF SURVIVING WITH OANDA BECAUSE IT ALLOWS YOU TO TRADE SMALL EVEN WITH JUST A $1 IN YOUR ACCOUNT. TRY DOING THAT WITH OTHER BROKERS.

"Drew, Australia" comment is correct, the low cost image is fake, they will take it form other income, e.g. hunting your stop, a 30 point spread spike for GBP, it is enough to kill all trader who place a close stop, 30 points, can anyone accept that?

their platform issue still unfix, here is the link of their forum
http://fxtrade.oanda.com/community/fxmessage/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=17;t=005799

here are the evidence for spread spike, they do it in any currency and the frequency is more than the chat show, please see jpy and gbp. a 30 point spread spike is absolutely much more than hedging their risk.
http://fxtrade.oanda.com/lang/cnt/why/spreads/recent

2010-11-01 1 Star I have already post a comment about oanda, today I want to make some additional comment, some reviewer said that oanda "never any requoting" I can tell you that it is not the truth, the truth is, when market is dead, you get "never any requoting", when market active, your order got hold and if your direction is wrong (u lost money), you get fill, if your direction is right(you make money), your order got rejected. That fact is, inside the oanda software, it have a field for you to enter the max slippage, if it is really "never any requoting ", what is the function for that field? for fun?

Oanda hunts stops and entries, which seems to be a recurring theme on this forum, particularly on spikes. I got suspicious when too frequently Oanda spiked exactly to my entries and stops and then retreated so I compared prices with another Oanda account (MT4) and a competitor and it proved my theory. Both never spiked as far. Following are some examples.

The most recent one was a AUS/CAD spike at 23.00 (15 min chart) on 21 March 2011 GMT. Their Java platform quoted 0.9859 hitting my stop but their MT4 platform quoted 0.98548
(4-5 pips difference), not hitting my stop.

Another was the AUD/JPY spiked down to 81.00 at 6.45 GMT 21 March exactly hitting my stop on the Java system but 81.02 on the MT4 platform, not hitting my stop. These are just two and I've got dozens more.

These kill you as a trader. So I'm leaving them. Oanda's good spreads and platforms mean nothing when their prices are against you. If you've been stopped exactly with Oanda and then retreats then check the prices of another provider, you will be shocked.

They have the most stable I-Phone platform. It never freezes when the market is very busy and all the other more popular platforms are not opening at all and are stuck at "loading." There demo account is indefinitely open there's no pressure from anyone in the company to open a live account. I have both the demo and live accounts. They both work great and very user friendly on I-Phone. I agree with some posters they are the best of all retail brokers.

They have introduced MT4 client support in their practice trial platform. That is good news.

Oanda doesn't want to return customer's fund.
It is really hard to get back your fund from this awful Candian company.
Does it have financial problem?

In fact, I am still waiting for my money form this SCAM FX company.

I have been using OANDA Platform for Demo account for around 2 months as I am a new entrant to this field. I was surprised to see that even during weekends, OANDA was accepting trades (of course the spread was running over 10 pips. Since I have demo account I wanted to test each and everything before I run in to a live real account. Can any one tell me if a broker takes your trade during weekends (Markets Closed), how does the broker fill it in for their safety? Is this a good sign of a broker or a bad sign?

i started using oanda on the advice of a trading sydtem "forx made e-z ( george smith) good ratings on FPA. well the trading system turned out to be s*** and so did oanda. i only used the practice account thank god! as soon as i would enter a trade the spread would be like 10 pips i would recheck the spread and it was 3, at the close of the trade it would have to lots of pips bacause the numbers did not add up. well i thought maybe i was doing something wrong. then i noticed a lag when i wanted to close a profitable trade costing me more pips .

well i still thought it was me. but what took the cake was today on news release, i submit the order and then inmediately modify it for stops and tops ( i know wrongooo but well, it worked before) as soon as i tried to modify the platform freezes, it had never happened before. tried to get back in, no way tried the live chat all agents are busy for ten minutes! i hang up now im really thinking... quite a coinsidence. could reconnect after 20 minutes by then y'all know what happened. im sure after reading the other reviews that there was nothing wrong with my connection and i checked anyway. fine...

so, i wanred to do some investigating during the weekend, im a retired CPA and my forte is auditing information systems, well guess what?? the platform is conveniently closed on weekends. again, quite a coinsidence, since that is when traders have time to analyze and play with data. WHAT A SCAM!!!

l urge FELIX to please look into these people, as an auditor, if it smells, looks and taste lilke s*** it is!!! please test this site once and for all im tired of loosing to scammers.

I'm sure Oanda is one of the best broker or the best. I have practice on FXGame during at least 2 years and i just started live since 3 months. The service customer is very informative and courteous. Last week, i have been disconnected just after placing an order, and when i have been able to reconnect i was in lost. A little slippage has occur in my order. I place a ticket to the support. The made a precise analysis of my ticket and i have receive a refund the same day. WOW, i am very well with this company. The spreads are the best and the platform is very interesting. So, for me, it's a 5 stars rating. Good luck in your trading.

Today was the day I finally decided after 3 years top terminate my account with Oanda.
What a waste of time.......
I've only used their piece of **** platform to place orders, not for anything else, until today it froze on me (like it didn't the past), but now they refuse to reverse the orders with idiotic reasons :

1) One support guy said - Delete your cache and logs and try again your platform. Then I said, if I delete them how can I prove what just happened? ...he says : Oh then save them first and then delete them!
2) Then he says, send us the traceroute to see if you "had" any issues accessing our server. I said that now (after 30minutes of downtime) I am connected. Traceroute shows you the route now, not 30mins ago.
3) I said I could access their online login either, it was slow like molasses. I told them you can see in the logs the repeated attempts coming fro my 2 IP's (two internet providers for redundancy) and he told me that they cannot identify client IP's in their logs...(???)
4) Then he said it was a problem on my end, but not being capable of displaying my trades, not their server. They cannot guarantee anything outside their network, and for him the server is working well.
5) Another agent (changed the live chat agent) told me that they had similar reports today, but they can't do anything about the trades. If I clicked submit the trade was sent, and then he said that my platform disconnected from the server.
I asked, If my platform was disconnected from the server (it was frozen), how come they were able to place the second order at exactly the same time with a different price? Then he said, it was basically not disconnected, it was just not showing me the trades opened. His term was " You had a problem with the display. You should clear your cache"
6) Then I asked to explain why the trades were placed if a: my platform was disconnected, and b: since the Market_Order_Window was frozen and not closing down by itself as it does when order is successful, and I had to close it down manually (basically canceling my pending order) how is it that they still placed the orders, and how come the price and the spread was still showing on my platform (supposedly with a display problem???)
7) Then I asked to explain why I was not able to login back for almost 15-20 minutes?

Regardless to say, the customer service is not there, the platform is subpar, there are freezes, requotes, sudden spikes in spread, impossible to trade during news, they have stupid averaging prices on candlesticks (what you see is definitely NOT what you get) and so on.

I would have rated SCAM and I can prove it, but until I do so, (I withdrawn my money, and now I will file a complaint) I will maintain my second east rating

I have been trading with Oanda for years. Generally speaking they have a solid platform, and I really like the selection of exotic currencies they offer. Also, their spreads are usually the best I've seen especially during normal market conditions.

I have used Oanda for 2 years and never had a problem with them. There customer service is great, spreads are low, but do up spreads 10 pips when a big news event comes out but that's only for a minute or two.. I have made money with them they do not stop hunt that I can tell.. I have seen other friends of mine have huge spikes on there platforms but not on my FXTrade platform ( so who stop hunting ) not Oanda.. You can trade anywhere from a penny per pip and up with them.. They are the best broker I have been with.. I have had the platform freeze but very seldom... I do wish that they had weekly, and monthly charts so if that is important to you, then I would download MT4 and use Oanda for your transactions.. Thank you for letting me share my experience..

2007-06-22 03:36 4 Stsrs Oanda's platform is great for my style of trading (I usually hold positions for several weeks). I can confirm, though, that they do play games with news traders, especially around NFP. Other than that, I think that they actually want you to be successful. I would highly recommend Oanda for people with a small amount of starting capital.

They are the best! I mean, THE BEST!
I don't know why some people tried to put them down, but so far I've been in the FOREX (4years) and tried many brokers, still can't find one as good as OANDA.

They offer you flexibility, where you can position sized exactly to your risk profile.

They withdraw your money fast, super fast compared to others.

The server never go down- in my experience.

They offer great low spread.

They are fair and transparent.

Customer service is so helpful and friendly.

IMHO, you can't expect more.

Hello, I have experienced frequent service interruptions trading with Oanda for the past year. Also, I have experienced several price spikes and tripped stop losses. After numerous incidents I decided to look on the BBB web site to see if any complaints have been filed. A couple complaints have been filed.

I've been using Oanda for a few months now and so far have been very happy with both their platform and customer service. As mentioned by some, sometime during major announcement the spreads will spike to around 10 pips but thus far this has not effected my trading. The other things I like about them is that there is never any requoting like other brokers. Also processing of deposits and withdrawals has been very quick. I'm glad I chose them over other brokers.

Oanda is a toy, as many other user said, a lot of execution problem, especially during very active market, for e.g. today, 15Oct2010, after 0815 Barnanke give a speech, market become active and problem occur, they hold your trade for up to 10 seconds, and worst, at the most active time, It disconnect at all, after the market clam down, I can reconnect with a lost of about $20 dollar gold.

It is not a individual case, I experience disconnect often, I am sure that it is not my internet problem because I dun even have a single disconnect when I use IB.

In brief, trade as your own risk, when someone give them a "five star", I doubt "how frequent they trade?" as an active trader, I will close my account next Monday.

I have been using Oanda for 6 months now and have had no issues. Their charts follow others and their spreads are good for a company that lets you deposit and withdraw with paypal. I also like how they have no minimum deposit, unlike most scams. I researched them and they operate legally. The best part is when I withdrew my money, it was processed by the next day. If this changes I will be the first one back here to warn you.

I would recommend caution using Oanda as broker. I have been with them a little over a year. Over the last two month I have had problems such as connection issues when I try to close trades, and most recently I had a trade go in the opposite direction on a long candel and it resulted in a SL rather than a TP. Very strange and still I have not been able to get an explanation from them though I assume broker intervention. I really wanted to stay with Oanda, but now I am looking for a new broker. I am just glad that I found out before I invested more money into an account with them.

simply onanda is good. somtimes they are expensive.But
quality product always expensive. If you understand the network
server,then when is busy i think they cant manage the network.
It is happen when high volume demand in sudden peak time.because they are good broker.Actually they are high quality cheap broker if you compare with expensive broker.

.

I have used oanda from 2001 and i want to say they are the best out there for small traders .forgien exchange is very sensitive and working with a good broker .they also use many ways of funding so you can use visa card through paypal also .they dont hunt your stop loss only in some cases when you use high leverage like i do you can face a hunt down for some pips it is great trading with them i am really enjoying it and i thank god there are a nice broker like this .i wish the best and me too .my regards
orabi ibrahim abdullah

Oanda tries to appeal their honesty but they are one of scam. I tried demo account one week. Customer service is kinda okay but did not give any clue. two or three time disconnectivities a day even when other website was working great. Also when I make profit, they widen the spead a lot for me not to make profit at all. I tried to open real account tomorrow with Oanda regardless of disconnectivity issue but with realizing manipulation of spread and slipage a lot of times, I make OANDA out from my lists. Could you recommend any honest broker which doesn't use cheating or REAL ecn (which is not fake ecn) broker?

Felipe
i have been trading live with Oanda for more than a year, and you are talking absolute crap, why not be honest with yourself and tell the truth, you don't know how to trade? i have never seen anything like you have described happen on this platform, very honest company and if i could rate them higher i would.

Oanda is a pretty good platform. I am satisfied with most of their facilities. Their online java-based platform works well, but not to be used for very high velocity trading.

2007-07-23 5Star I have to say, after reading most of the longer and in depth reviews, that some of you need to think beyond the broker in a larger picture to understand what is occurring. I have used OANDA as my brokerage for over a year now, with, well, what I would describe as mixed results depending on the trading strategy used.

For news trading, which I did when I was absolutely new to the FX world, I did well a few times, but after a string of losers, I abandoned the strategy, mostly due to the spread increases and the mixed and unpredictable reactions to data. So, for news traders, this is NOT the brokerage to use.

For carry trades, taking advantage of interest differentials (beyond the normal "carry trade"), and pip-sniping, OANDA is a very good brokerage. The platform, is, well, clunky and rather limited. Since OANDA developed a desktop starter for the platform, the disconnections have cut from 3 a month (I have detailed stats on this) to an average of 1, though for the entire month of June, I haven't had a disconnect. Nor July for that matter.

The customer service isn't as bad as people described it here, in my experience anyway. However, one must remember that service depends on the stress level of that individual to whom one is speaking, so one day that very nice individual could be a complete dragon (or some other rather scaly, ugly, disgusting animal) the next.

The price spikes occur a little too frequently for my taste, but since I trade about 16 different pairs on an average day, proportionally, a spike makes little difference to me. OANDA has been fairly good at correcting spike-resulting deviations (not devinations!), though they will take a bit of time going through all the accounts that they have. Here is a general good rule of thumb: if a spike occurs on a currency (the last one that comes to mind is CAD), don't trade that currency for the rest of the day/night.

In summation to this absurdly long discussion of OANDA's brokerage capabilities, it is a good starting brokerage. Use them to understand market movements, how the markets work, and the functionality of orders and what not. After getting past six or seven digit account balances, I highly implore you to switch to an ECN (best to do around 35-50k balances) like MBT.

Lastly, (I promise!), avoid the levels where there is limited liquidity because that can cause some major slippage on fills. Remember there is ALWAYS someone on the opposite end of your trade. Try to maximize the probability of having someone on the other side of your trade that you want to earn you profit.

Worst platform ever used, they hunt stop losses, every single time I made RELATIVELY tight stop losses; prices hit it then went back to "normal" moves. WTF?! Prices are always different from actual real prices on the market, it's not rare at ALL to see price moves in the OPPOSITE direction of the market price. I call this financial raping, terrorism or banditism, whatever. I learned a tough lesson (especially an expensive lesson) but if you want to save lot's of money, don't use this sh*tty platform. Trust me... Funny thing is that I retraced my orders using the real market quotes.. I would have made money instead of losing half of it. Screw Oanda.

I posted a review about 2 weeks ago. It appears that I spoke too soon. I was trading today and the site went down. I have an open order with a stop at breakeven and went to move my stop to protect my profit and get a msg that the server is busy. I tried logging in multiple ways including desktop, laptop, iPhone. Over half an hour now and still down. This is really not acceptable when there is no ability to phone anyone.

2010-05-25 5 Stars I have been using Oanda for some time and I have found them to be the best broker I have used. The only brokers I could compare them with would be MB and Dukascopy (which are both fine brokers I have personal experience with).

The reason I prefer Oanda is the flexibility. There is complete flexibility with lot size, which means I can always risk exactly 1% a trade, which is difficult to do with Dukas who's min lot size was 250 000 when I used them and MB, who's min is 10 000.

They have also recently released an iphone app that is excellent.

I was reluctant to use Oanda for a long time because they are a market maker and I had more trust in ECN brokers, but the flexibility of lot size bought me to Oanda in the end.

I've not experienced any problems such as trouble logging in, slippage, stop hunting or any problem associated with other market makers.

I also personally believe that the spreads and fills are the best I have ever received from any broker.

It's been a great experience and one I fully recommend.

2009-10-28 No Rating I recently started using Oanda, although haven't used them long enough to leave a review. Everything seems good at the moment, but I would like to wait longer before reviewing with a rating.

I do however want to address some comments I just read in a recent review. A guy is attacking Oanda and it seems to me that the complaint is largely that he lost $100 000 with a money manager who used Oanda. He also states that Oanda probably don't even "edge" the trades.

I received 4 documents from Oanda when I joined and I read every sentence in all four documents and I clearly remember reading that Oanda may or may not hedge your trades. It was very clear. I didn't like everything that I read in those documents, but I did think that for the most part, they were very clear about their service.

To blame Oanda because a poor manager lost money seems a little harsh, maybe misdirected.

I think the problem is more money managers, and this is a problem I have personally experienced. The internet has allowed people to make a lot of fake claims, operate unregulated or from jurisdictions where their actions are unregulated and good trusting people loose their money.

I agree, I sympathize and I admit, I have lost substantial money with various managers, but in only 1 instance did I feel the broker screwed me (forex.com) when they failed to close the account as instructed and left open positions decimate my account and wouldn't let me revoke my LPOA and basically gave me the runaround.

Anyway, what I meant to write was Oanda seems fine to me and I don't think it is Oanda's job to black-ban managers who loose money. I think it is the investors job to find a good manager (and broker).

In my experience, they should have a real address and telephone number where you can speak to someone and they should have supporting documents, product disclosure statements that reveal how they are paid and preferably come from a country that is developed and has a body that oversees the managers behavior/actions/claims etc.

2007-04-03 No Rating If you want to trade the news then FORGET ABOUT DOING IT w/Oanda. This is my latest and last experience with them. This morning the RBA rate announcement was due. Their famous, extremely tight spread before and during the announcement showed of 20 points(!) reading, it is normally 2 points. And not just that, the news announcement did not show up on their bulletin board for 10(!) minutes and then when it did it showed up as it had been announced right on the dot at 9.30 am. (obviously, nobody gets the braking news from Oanda's news bulletin, I know, but I find what they do with this "back timing" move rather dishonest for obvious reasons). The server also gets shot down after major US news announcement, it is a common practice. Apart from these "slight" hiccups I don't think they are any worse than any other brokers out there. And if you think about it, if it was possible to get into the market during critical news announcements without the above mentioned hurdles then I would let my two-year-old child to trade for me and make a guaranteed 10% a week.

I have been with OANDA since August of 2005. I usually don't care about rating a company unless it is Terrible or Excellent.

OANDA has gone through it's growing pains and are significantly better now then before. For those of you bashing this company, try going to another...you'll find just as many and usually more problems.

There are two kinds of traders, amateurs and professionals. I find more often then not that the ones struggling to "make-it" in this business are the first to blame their tools.

If you have over million dollars to trade, you should be dealing with an ECN, not OANDA. If you are just starting out (breaking even/traded demo for at least a year), I would recommend having a few "live" accounts with several different brokers and test their trading in real money situations, test their withdraw methods and timeliness. What you will find is OANDA is at the top of the list when it comes to which one you'd like to put the largest chunk of your money with.

I am not going to brag on here how much I have made or what my ROI is...(if you'd like to get to know me visit my blog - bgin2end.wordpress).

forexpeacearmy.com is doing more for the FOREX culture then any other single entity out there right now. Thanks guys!

These reviews are strange (the ones with the problems) as I have never had a problem trading. Had issues logging in, but I had no trades pending and really didn't care (3 am).

Hi. I've been trading with a live account for about a year. I traded with a practice account for a year before that. (Very good advice for newbies!! I thought a year was overkill, but it's NOT if you want to do this long-term).

Pros:
1) It appears the practice and live accounts behave the same way.

2) The degree to which you can customize their charts is AWESOME! Although it takes some time to figure it all out. I'm currently running multiple different views all done up in girly pastel colors! With easy access to absolutely any view I need! I have a view (profile) for each pair I trade plus a view of all pairs across different timeframes. This is great for spotting arbitrage opportunities. For example, when a big move in USD causes a cross-pair (such as GBP/CHF) to spike out of whack -- ride it on the way back to where it was.

3) LOVE that you can automatically set the size of your trade as a percent of the account balance. Similarly, set the TPs and SLs to a percent you want to take, or are willing to lose. I like the way this works so much that it is the main thing keeping me from switching to another broker.

4) They're financially stable per the CFTC reports. But for them to be making so much money, you kind of have to wonder how....

Cons:
1) Their mobile phone software is in DESPERATE need of an update! Although I generally love their desktop platform, I may switch just because of their weak mobile app. I use the free Dukascopy iPhone app (Swiss Forex) to monitor market activity while trading on Oanda's mobile app. The data feeds seem pretty identical to me (but I'm not running the Dukascopy trading app, just their iPhone charting app). When I tried to use phone apps from other brokers for charting, while trading with Oanda's mobile app, I noticed the prices and spikes really varied. So, finding two fairly reputable brokers with apparently identical data feeds makes me have more confidence in both of them.

2) You MUST set your charts to show BOTH the Bid AND Ask prices (not just the default Average price) so you can really see whether you are in danger of getting stopped out. Their spreads do vary quite a bit and I think that this makes it LOOK like they are stop hunting. If they ARE stop hunting, I believe they would be doing it by increasing the spread wide enough to hit the stop. I understand why they feel the need to widen spreads during low-liquidity times -- you just have to be careful that you don't get stopped out when these times come up. Friday afternoon just before market close is the most dangerous for this! I don't even trade anymore after noon US EST on Fridays. Same goes for Sundays before 8PM.

3) I can't confirm or deny whether they play technology games with access to the site. I have fiber coming into my home, and I'm on a fairly powerful Mac. But It does seem weird that when I'm making money I seem to have more issues than when I'm losing money. I also noticed if I'm running the software on more than one computer (at the same time) and I save changes to a profile on any other computer vs. my main computer, I seem to have trouble after that. So I'm not sure. I'll post more details if I figure more out.

In summary, I really want to love this broker. But I'm starting to believe I might be able to improve my performance by switching. I'm just really hooked on their software and financial stability. And I guess I'm still willing to "pay" for that. For the moment, anyway.

I would definitely recommend Oanda as a great broker to start out on -- especially for practicing since there is no time limit on their practice account. Then when you get good and want to trade larger positions (and need better / more reliable access, especially from your phone), it's probably time to switch. That's about where I am right now.

Hope this was helpful!

Not able to change my leverage when I want to; I changed it to 40:1 and it's actually only 25:1, impossible to update it. This is even more terrible as I think their program is poorly programmed, it used 25 as in 0.025 margin instead of 40 which is the right one... VERY BAD MISTAKE!

Oanda is one of the FEW honest Forex market makers that there are. I have been trading with them for over 5 years. The only complaints I have are a few price spikes which were always corrected, and their platform which had some connectivity issues every now and then. Both problems have become very rare. Their low spreads are great, and they have true instant one click execution. I don´t know how many trades I have done through Oanda, but I never had a requote or any other problem with trade execution. The other thing that I really appreciate with them is, that it usually takes only 24 hours for a withdrawal to appear on my bank account. I find this pretty amazing. It allready takes 1-2 days for a wire tranfer within Germany! Overall, I think they are a very good forex broker. However, if you have A LOT of money, don

I am still researching FX trading and I have come across a lot of comments about OANDA's spread around news time. I wonder if most comments were made by people who already started trading, how could they not know the following, and question if OANDA was conducting shady transaction? They are market maker and dealer desk, it is in their business nature, and for that matter, all of the dealer desk brokers, to conduct in the following way to make profit or protect them from high risks. I think that if we know the rules OANDA and other dealer-desk brokers play by, then it is up to us to decide if we can win by the rules of the game.

"Liquidity providers give retail dealers spreads that change constantly throughout the day, even numerous times per minute. In order for a broker to receive variable spreads from a bank, but pass through fixed spreads to clients, there are two common practices retail dealing desk can employ.

A. Shading: This occurs when the broker offers a fixed spread that is lopsided to one side of the market. Let's say that the broker sees prices on EUR/USD at 1.3250 bid and 1.3251 ask. If the broker offers a fixed spread, then his rate should be 1.3249 by 1.3252 as he marks up the spread 1 pip on each side to collect his transaction cost. The client in this example trades on a fixed spread of 3 pips.
However, if the broker is heavy with buy orders, he may be worried about taking on more buy orders as that will add to his risk exposure. Remember dealing desks end up having to bunch orders as there rarely are the same amount of buyers and sellers in frequency and quantity throughout the day. In this case the broker's book is tilted. The broker may then choose to shade the market to the sell side by offering a rate of 1.3250 by 1.3253. In this scenario, the spread is still fixed at 3 pips, but traders trying to buy are now paying an extra pip to get into the market.
B. Re-quoting trades: Because the dealing desk broker accepts all orders, there are times when he needs to re-quote trades. (See point 2 from No Dealing Desk.)
The above listed practices are just a couple of examples dealing desk brokers use to manage their risk. In contrast, a No Dealing Desk broker will pass on variable spreads so that traders can trade without a conflict of interest. A No Dealing Desk broker will just mark up the variable spread received from the banks by 1 pip on each side. There are times that fixed spreads look very attractive as compared to variable spreads."

The best spreads.
If you can trade in a plattform what frequently disconnect or higher timeframes.
But my internet connection and the configuration of my computer is first class and is very unpleasant to me to be disconnected many times in the day and reconnect, wait, etc when all is right in my computer.
I am trading 1 year with Oanda and every day the same problems, and there is nothing to do, for my part I tried all.
I am looking another broker.

I have traded live over one year with them now, fantastic instant fills, and closing trades, transfering of funds no problems whatsoever, i will never use any other broker

Screw this shady company! In the past 3 years that I have traded with them, I had nothing but trouble.

If you have enough screen time then you will see how ridiculously they try to make you lose your money.

The first half year of 2009, I had a hard time finding my edge in the market which had nothing to do with oanda. I lost quite a bit of money - but wow their platform was running perfectly every single day. I never had any disconnection problems or slippage problems, etc....

After hard work, I found my edge again and started making some serious money. As soon as I was able again to pull in a thousand per day, the platform started acting weird. It worked fine as long as I wouldn't trade but as soon as I took a trade, price would jump within 1 second 40 pips!!!! I experienced disconnection problems and sometimes wouldn't be able to sign in for one hour.

Of course, my comp was perfectly fine, internet fine! But no one else had any problems with their software at that time.
I own 3 offices that are in different cities and I experienced the same problems on all 3 locations.

After I lost around 90% of my account the software became perfectly fine again. It didnt't take long and I made 50% of my losses back up.

GUESS WHAT!!

The software got the same problems again!

I even had prove that they were stop hunting. On 3 other brokers price would not have stopped me out. All they had to say was that candles never show the real price and are unreliable!!!!!!!!!!!!! WOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Last friday I took a position - of course just after I entered it, I wasn't able to sign into the platform. I always have a "security SL" which is quite big. Like I said it's for security, in cases like last friday. I would never ever let price get there though.
After a few hours of waiting I was able to sign back in again. My security SL got hit and I was almost sure that I would get my money back.

F*** OANDA!!

They told me that my SL got hit, I explained that I would never let price go there but he acted like a robot and repeated the same things over and over. I told them that I will expect them to refund that lost money or else I will go somewhere else.

The answer was. Unfortunately we cannot refund your money.

STAY FAR AWAY FROM OANDA!!!!!

I signed upwith Oanda about a month ago and all I did until now is the FXGame which works very well. I hope the real trading platform works as well as the game or at least 60-70%.
I read some of the reviews posted here and someone was saying that, soonest you start making a lot of money they are going to close your account. My question is: how much money are we talking about? What amount of money you make in any given day or week would be a lot of money?
I would appreciate a reply to my question.
I will start trading live in a couple of days and I will post a review in a few weeks or a month.

Simply a poor company to put your money in. I have demo traded with Oanda for a couple of days. Platform disconnected very frequently. In case I lost my connection, I've put the platform on my remote server in U.S. and tried to trade, but it just kept disconnecting. Sometimes, it disconnected right after a trade is entered, and I couldn't do anything but wait for my SL to hit in loss. Don't waist your money and time. Search somewhere else! They say the demo and live are the same, which means their live account is useless. I'm happy I didn't trade with them on live.

The tightest spreads, period. Asolute best broker in my book. I am extremely profitable on this platform. I have had to have one issue resolved years ago and they fixed the problem.