Hopefully you all had a good Christmas! Just got a quick question regarding OANDA as I’ve seen a few people recommend this broker.
One thing I would like to clarify with you guys is the spread on this broker, in the quotes panel you have whatever currencies you select to be there, left is sell and right side is buy and the spread is in the middle. I’ve logged on to OANDA a few times and from what I can see the spread jumps like crazy, one minute the spread sits at 2.0 for a pair then literally seconds pass it jumps to like 7.0 or even 9.0!? Such volatility with spread is mad is it not?
Just looking to confirm if I’m looking at this wrong or if the broker is being very greedy with spread count and if that’s the case I will stick with FXCM who have brilliant set spreads.
Edit: Also I forgot to mention, if the spread jumps like this would this not cause your stop loss to be hit alot easier if a trade moves against you? and the spread has been moved from 2.0 to 8 or 9.0 by the broker?
I have been with Oanda since they were recommended here for the reason that it were not too complicated to get an account with them while in South Africa and the other big reason is that they trade using units and not lots.
Yes the spread is ridiculous especially when market is closed and just before and during big news events. The spreads of 8 pips does not bother me too much as I`m a swing trader and have not been using small stops since I learned that even small news events can spike you out faster than you can say brb.
Yes - very much so. for the type of trading I do, that could easily produce an “accident”.
Most brokers’ spreads are ridiculous when the market’s closed, and just before/during big news events.
Counterparty market-makers [U]have[/U] to have big spreads when the market’s closed and just before/during big news events, otherwise they won’t survive.
These are times not to trade.
However, this is the second time in the last couple of months that I’ve seen reports of Oanda having terrible spreads.
It’s hard to know from such reports whether they refer to instances when all counterparty brokers would have had big/widening spreads.
It may, of course, be that Oanda’s spreads are not “what they were” (I traded with them for many years, and the average spread on EUR/USD was around 1.0 - 1.2 pips, throughout that time. I never traded around news announcements or when the underlying market wasn’t in its RTH, though.)
It would stop me from trading there, for sure: that’s nearly [I]8 times[/I] the dealing costs I’d be expecting. :58:
(Edited to add: [I]at this moment[/I], Oanda’s spread on EUR/USD is 1.1 pips, which looks normal, to me.)
I will keep an eye on the spread increase during normal trade times and and let everyone here know the results, although it is a bit concerning that a broker should increase the spread by 8-10 pips around mid day for a news event, kind of comes across as a broker just getting greedy and at the same time stop loss hunting, something I’ll keep an eye on as I’m starting a demo account with them to track my results.
My plan will be to make this as realistic as possible by starting with either £5000 or a £10,000 capital, tracking/screen shot every trade I make so by the time I hit 50 trades I have good information/stats on how I’m doing and what my profit % is overall. My risk per trade will be 1% of my capital and I will not exceed this limit under any circumstances. I will focus on the bigger time frames as well, trading on the 4 hour/8 hour/Daily (mainly 4 hour TF I think).
I was just worried incase OANDA screws with my results if they increase spread so much because even for a day trader 10 pips is a lot.
Thanks - it will be interesting, if we can compare it with those of other brokers.
It comes across that way (and with some of the scammier counterparty brokers, there will doubtless be an element of that involved in it), but at the same time, understanding the business model of counterparty brokers shows that this is something they [U]have[/U] to do, to some extent, to protect themselves and manage [I]their own[/I] risk.
I hear you. I can only tell you that in my opinion Oanda has a good, long record of being one of the most ethical, reliable and straightforward of all the counterparty market-maker brokers.
It’s possible that they’ve “gone off”, of course (I haven’t traded with them for quite a while, now), and that would be very bad news indeed.
It would also leave me without an easy, convenient, counterparty broker to be able to recommend from my own experience to people who want to open a small account with good position-sizing granularity. So I’m [I][U]hoping[/U][/I] that they’re actually no worse than any others.
I used to be with Oanda. They are a very good broker indeed and I trust them. However, as has already been mentioned, they do widen their spreads to sometimes ridiculous amounts during important news events. Since I regularly hold trades through the news, I had to look for a different broker.
Stay away from the news and they are a good choice.