im new to the game and I really like this broker and wanna sign up in the future, but i’m so use to MT4 right now. anyways Im trying to place a limit order, how do I figure out how many units to place according to my balance and set up the quote? Im trying to test out Phil’s Sunday Breakout Strat. so that’s why i wanna know…help a noob out? Their Buy/Sell order window is so confusing to me for some reason.
Oanda uses units of base currency instead of lot size. So in Metatrader if you are trading 1 lot. In Oanda that would be 100,000 units. In Oanda if you put in a size of 1 in your trade then you are trading one dollar, or one GBP or whatever the base currency is.
Get their practice set up and play with it for awhile. It takes some getting used to.
let’s say i only wanna risk 2% of my account, how do i calculate that and figure the most units i can put up?
so according to Oanada, if i have 10,000 in my account and wanna risk 1% of that, i would put in 1000 units?
okay i’m begining to understand their platform now, I still can’t figure out how to turn on the Horizontal line where you purchase or sell like on MT4
hi there,
There is no horizontal line in Oanda for orders - it’s a wee arrow-like icon, blue for buy, orange for sell. If it is not coming up on screen you may need to tick the box. You can also click directly on this icon to close trades.
If you go too the small boxes on top right of screen and tick show active trades, your trade icon will show up on screen - and in those boxes are many other tools for managing trade. To place an order you can click anywhere on screen and the order window comes up - rather than click buy sell boxes
In the order window you should have the $ value of each unit. 1000u = 1$
If it is not there, tick the box.
If you go to user preferences - under ‘trading’ you can set a default stop loss take profit and tick confirmation window so stop shows on screen - to move the stop/TP just hover and click.
Also under user preferences ‘chart’ you can have weekend data hidden - set default colours for trendlines, etc.
Hope that helps - I’ve used Oanda always and only recently attempted Mt4 - which I find complicated. Yeah you can get all the bells and whistles, but I personally find managing a trade and moving things around on screen much quicker and simpler in Oanda.
cheers
In the user preference section you can set an order size to 2% (or whatever % you want), unit size, or $ amt.
sorry I made a mistake it’s 10,000units = 1$!
“let’s say i only wanna risk 2% of my account, how do i calculate that and figure the most units i can put up?”
I think you’re confusing “risk” and dollar value per pip. The amount you’re risking is the amount that you’re willing to loose when you enter a trade. So let’s say you enter a trade at value A and set a stop-loss at value B, the difference between A and B (A - B) is your risk. This is expressed in pips. How much each pip is worth depends on the size of your contract. A full contract is worth $10 per pip (in base value). To get this kind of value per pip, you would enter $100,000 as contract size. So If you entered $10,000, your pips would be worth $1 in your base currency and if you entered $1,000 they would be worth $0.1. With most brokers, your options would end here, but Oanda allows you to enter any contract size you want. For example, you could size it at $2,000 and each pip would be worth $0.2, and at $20,000 they would be $2.
Let me know if this makes sense 
so 10,000 units is 1 buck, the more units i enter, the more risk i’m taking right. okay
so the 2% of my $1,000 which is $20, that’s the MAX amount that I SHOULD be risking should i lose when i trade correct? okay i think i got it sorry a lil slow
Ok, so if you want to risk $20, and you go long on eur/usd at 1.4000, you could place a stop-loss at 1.3980 and set your contract size at $10,000. Or you could place a stop-loss at 1.3800 and set your contract size at $1,000.