Hello everyone, I have been into forex for about a month now and have started the demo process after I have finished the School of Pipsology. I am currently on a demo program with Oanda MT4 edition and I like so far. But I am here to ask opinions of those who have accounts with Oanda (MT4 or not) on if you think they’re a good broker or not. I like the fact that their spreads are quite low seeing from the research I have done on other brokers. Your opinions and advice would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks for your reply PipBandit. I’ve heard a lot of good reviews about them on forex review sites but wanted to check with the Babypip community on your opinions.
When trading with MT4 (demo account) I noticed that, periodically, say, every 20 minutes or so, connection with server seems to break (but in the logo on the inferior right connection stays ON all the time), visually what one notices is that the candlestick stops and, after the stopping period it appears a few pips above or below creating a discontinuity in the chart). For intra-day traders this could present a serious problem. Does not seems to be purposefully induced error, since it happens all the time, i.e. when I am with a position, without a position,making profit or taking losses… It just… happens all the time, periodically. I tested MT4 with other brokers and this didn’t happen so it’s a not a bandwidth problem or laptop problem, I tested it with Oanda with several network providers, so, again, it is not network issue.
I always look for reliable brokers. If you want to do yourself a favor: Use a real ecn broker. If you use a market maker it is very likely it eats up a lot of your profits if not all by spread spikes, requotes, disconnection issues, etc. etc.
If you don’t mind about 10 pips plus or minus for your entry plus another for your exit, then go with a market maker. So, if you trade on the weekly or monthly chart primarily go with it. If you use an EA or intraday strats, forget about any market maker! I’m not going to say they all rise all the issues intentionally or you can’t make money with it (I did!), but it doesn’t matter to me if I have problems with my broker because they run after my money intentionally or if they invest more in promotions instead of a reliable server platform.
I don’t know where you heard that and what “a lot of money” means to you. You can get a ecn account with micro lots and below 1k deposit. There are also MT4 ecn brokers. Here is a list of ecn brokers:
However, even if a broker collects some micro lots to hedge that later on, if it’s an ecn there is less room to play tricks. You can see the order depth and other things going on.
Plus I do not recommend any company. There is a lot out there and what fits with me does maybe not fit with you or another trader. I am satisfied with my new broker so far, but I was also satisfied with my former broker until it turned to be a bucket shop after a while. Brokers can change. Just look at fpa or other feedback sites to get a clue what’s going on. One broker might have 4 stars today there and 2 stars tommorrow.
The sure difference what I recognized straight away is that the typical order execution of a true ecn is far better than a market maker delivers. A market maker has to modify the spread and other things which takes valuable time. If you get a broker with typical execution speeds above 1 second it is very likely not a true ecn broker. A true ecn delivers typical speeds way below 1 second. That includes feedback that your orders got filed. Plus if a market maker puts more effort in ads instead of reliable servers, those execution speeds of a market maker can easily exceed a minute. As I wrote, this is a none issue if your trades are open for days or weeks and you go for 200 pips, but a system with intraday trades and targets below 100 pips can switch from profitable to a loser system just because of bad order execution.
Thank you for your well explained comment, Sir. It is a serious issue to find a good broker for sure. I will investigate it. More bad, demo accounts can be misleading, giving you a false picture about the broker.
One more question if you do not mind. Could you explain the “comission” thing ? How is it charged? Only when trader is in profit? My problem is that I do not understand “round turn lot”. What is that?
There is also a link at the top left of this site where you can browse for brokers with particular specifications. Right, demo says nothing. Anyways, if you believe there is something wrong with a broker, better withdraw your money and try another one. It may cost more transaction fees than to stay, but what sense does it make to stay with issues you do not like?
Commission is charged independently from your p/l. Round lot means you pay commission for an entry and another one for an exit. Same what my broker charges. Entry and exit. Anyways, there is one advantage with commissions: Usually you have a tighter spread then and if the fee is in the commission that can’t trigger your stop loss earlier. If you have all the fees in the spread then you need statistically a wider stop.
Well, bottom line it doesn’t make a difference if you have the same fees in the spreads or as commission. Regarding the fee size it is probably like the old saying, you pay what you get for. Sure it makes no sense to pay overrated commissions or spreads, but I guess the brokers with cheapest spreads without commission have either no money for good server equipment or they may try to get the money from elsewhere, like trading against the client. If it’s too good to be true …
I have a broker with an interbank feed now and the commissions are not the lowest (spread and commissions together are like around 1-2 pips without commission). In fact if I take the spread and the commission together it’s a little more than just the spread at my former broker. Albeit there is no question which broker is better and I do rather pay a little more and have a reliable execution than saving a fraction of a pip but ugly execution.
I have been satisfied with Oanda until this week. I had 4 re quotes, 1 TP not triggered due to “spread”, 1 disconnect when i wanted to close my trade in profit, 1 order canceled due to some kind of big volume error from what i can see. I have also experienced this MT4 candle lagging, the connection says its there but its at like 10kbs or something really slow like that. I have only been trading live with them for a couple months. For the entire time before that i only had 1 order canceled before and 1 SL taken out due to spread. My slippage is around .5-1 pip at most though, not 10 pips. Most of the time its filled exactly at your limit. Last week was a crazy week but really those errors cost me a lot.
Now I will give them this on my re quotes they did compensate my account for the difference and reinstated my orders when they were falsely triggered due to bad quotes.
I have been getting extremely slow execution using MT4 with Oanda, the worst I’ve had, and this was with a demo account. I also got an “Off quotes” error, I don’t know what this means but I’ve never had it with any other broker…
Yes, you pay then for opening an order and a close. But not for a merge of orders or something like that.
I don’t know what their advantage is if you win, beside of their commission. Frankly, it’s not my business to worry about my broker as long as he is giving me a fair platform. What I assume though is that they make some money with interest on my deposited money as well. That’s what probably all brokers do and that’s probably the reason there is a minimum account deposit.
Over the past two days, I’ve also been experiencing severe order execution delays with Oanda’s MT4. I’ve been demo-trading with them for a while and was about to go live when this happened. My report to their customer service desk from yesterday remains unanswered and all that their live chat operator can suggest is “to email them with a screenshot of my problem”.
Further, I cannot register on their forum to post - upon hitting the registration button, I get the “page not found” error message.
