I’m very happy with the platforms that both Oanda and Citifx Pro provide. But I am looking for more information about peoples experience with either of these two brokers in terms of executing trades and making money. Feel free to suggest other brokers as well if you feel they are superior to the ones I am considering.
I am in this for the long haul, so I really am looking for answers from traders who’ve been with either of these brokers for a few months or years of trading.
Also I noticed that people feel you should move on from Oanda once you’re beyond a certain account size? Why is this? Why wouldn’t Oanda work for a trader with hundreds of thousands or even millions in their trading account, when it is good for a trader with only hundreds OR thousands?
Ok… Oanda is the worst ever, Citibank is in fact Citibank, Annnnd you plan on running Citi’s trading division. Also, Avril Lavigne. Because f*** it, why not?
Oanda is great, I’ve been with them since 2009 and I’ll vouch for them. They also work just as well for larger accounts, don’t believe the misinformed who will tell you otherwise.
Only reason to switch from Oanda would be that at a certain account size one might want to move from spot forex to futures instead.
I don’t have any live trading experience with Citi or Oanda, but I have used their MT4 platforms and read over their websites. In my experience with Oanda, I was not impressed. The spreads are good, but the execution time is pretty bad. This could be my location in the world and not Oanda, but the execution time was a deal-breaker. I think the deposits and withdrawals are pretty straight-forward as well.
The biggest thing that Citi has to offer is FDIC insured deposits. U.S. brokers are regulated, but as far as I know, their deposits aren’t insured. The execution time for me was good on the demo trades. The deal breaker is the amount of money they want as a deposit, as well as the method. At minimum, you need $10,000 to open an account, and it must be done through a bank transfer. There’s just so much paperwork in that kind of stuff.
My personal choice is Forex.com. It’s a pretty well-known broker. I’ve never had a problem with deposits or withdrawals. Customer service even refunded me a loss when MT4 goofed and traded the incorrect pair. I’ve been tempted, however, to look into UPFX, Alpari, and FXCM… But for now, Forex.com works pretty well.
At any rate, if you’ve narrowed it down to Citi or Oanda, I’d go with Citi. The security of your deposits is a big advantage, in my opinion.
I think they are great, but when prices are going down too fast, the stop loss never worked for me. So I’ve ended up with some couple of -2000£ when I did setup the stoploss. In fact, I let the one by default they’ve proposed, -30 pips.
That was only on a demo account though. Did you see the same thing?
To come back to OandA, I’ve seen horrible delays on the demo account on MT4, which didn’t convince me really. However it looked like their spread was tighter than forex.com.
I think their inhouse tool is working much better, but I just don’t like their graphs.
I had as well couple of delays on alpari, but was really please with FXCM platform.
Now everyting is relative I’ve been learning traiding for 2 months now, but been trying quite intensively forex.com, alpari, OandA, GFT and FXCM on demo accounts.
My feeling is that forex.com (the inhouse pro platform is really good), GFT and FXCM are safe choices, but they all have pros and cons, so I would suggest you to try those platforms for 1 week or so each, to see if the ergonomy suits you at least.
Thanks everyone, great information. It’s good to hear that there are people who’ve had good experience with Oanda. The fact that with Citibank your money is FDIC insured is a major plus.
I have not tried GFX, or Forex.com so I will give them a go. FXCM’s spreads seem like quite a rip off. They hover around 3 pips, when everyone else is providing around 2 or even 1. Also, I am wondering can you execute carry trades with spread betting brokers?
Stop losses with FOREX.com’s MT4 have never been a problem on my end. I despise their ForexTraderPro (?) platform, though.
If you can round up 10,000 to open an account, I’d open one with Citi. Has CitiFX been fined yet? FXCM and Forex.com have been fined thousands and thousands (In FXCM’s case, millions) of dollars for defrauding their customers.
With the MF Global bankruptcy, I think it would be wise to go some place where your deposits are protected (CitiFX) – if you can.
I use Oanda, Both Platforms, Jave and MT4, Live accounts on both,
MT4 is horrible, well, alllllllllllllllll MT4 platforms are horrible, JMO…
Now, Oanda Java, Great… Very fast response, and I trade by the seconds most of the time.
Do be aware, they WILL NOT take any deposit over $500,000— Kinda like, they are not so sure for some reason, and Deposits are on point, Even at $250,000…
Thanks o990l6mh and yeh I am in the UK right now. So, when you say that CitiFX Pro is a white label of Saxo Bank, does this means that Citifx just uses Saxo Banks platform? Or does it go deeper than that? And how much weight should I give to judging Saxo Bank when considering Citifx?
That is some solid protection from Oanda, good to know. If I were to have more than that with Oanda, what are the risks? Is it only in the case of Oanda filing bankruptcy or some similar process, where I could lose money? Or are there other circumstances as well (outside of trading where one can of course lose the money).
Hi MoneyNVRSleeps. So they won’t accept deposits of over $500k? That’s interesting… so is it a case of needing to make many deposits to build your account size beyond that? Or does that represent some upper limit to the amount of capital you can have with them?
I don’t know the details quite for how their white label partnership works but it’s clear that they use Saxo’s software with their own logo. I don’t know if Saxo actually runs the whole operation for them or if they do that themselves.
As I understand it you should only risk losing money that goes above 50.000£ if Oanda Europe goes into bankruptcy or something similar. Then again one can never foresee every possible event but imho they’re about as good as spot forex brokers get.
I guess most traders shift to futures brokers when their accounts reach a certain size, but I’m not there yet myself.
I use Trader’s way and FXCM for trading, esp the low spreads [trader’s way] and as for Citi, don’t get me started on it, still very bitter about the whole experience. But on Onada, jury’s still out but it does look good though…
I’ve been learning traiding for 2 months now, but been trying quite intensively