Hey guys,
I am a 46 yr old retired Wall Street equities trader and now full time retail FX trader living in the province of Quebec with a 75k plus account at Oanda for the last three yrs.
Rhickman I think you are wrong to dismiss Oanda so quickly. First of all they are not just operating in Canada, they are headquartered in Toronto, so right off the bat there is a question of keeping your money in the Canadian economy, jobs, helping the home team etc. Which means something to me.
You are putting a serious amount of hard earned cash into [B]someone else’s hands[/B], “counter party risk”, I feel much better with a Canadian counter party, operating within the very tight Canadian regulatory environment.
Also, an accountant friend told me that having an account offshore (with a broker in Switzerland or Cyprus) is a red flag for revenue Canada.
But more importantly I have been really,really pleased with my experience at Oanda. I have never ever had a problem executing trades, entering or adjusting stops or anything else. The site has never ever been unavailable or crashed.
OK, you can’t use 500:1 leverage but, honestly only a fool would. I never exceed 8:1 in any situation.
I try as best I can to live only from my FX profits, which means every few weeks dealing with wire transfers, it gets complicated and I am always happy to be dealing on the phone with people in Toronto. I have been in my bankers office in Quebec and got them on the phone with the Oanda people to resolve wire transfer complications and everything has always turned out great. I always thank god I am not dealing with back office people in freaking Cyprus. Can you imagine?
Forget all this talk about ECN, dealer blah blah blah, What the hell difference does it make? None of us are on interbank dealing desks trading cable by the yard.
One last piece of advice given to me by my fathers old partner in NYC. “Always assume that the trade you are about to put on is not going to work”
to which I said " So, if it’s not going to work why are we doing it? "
" Cause that’s our job, kid! "