This actually happened 10 minutes before the close on Friday. All the major spreads are 10 or 20 pips as of the weekend 10/31/2009.
Is this normal for OANDA or anyone else to do?
ps…someone was FURIOUS on the OANDA forum for being stopped out when the spread spiked
Yes, but the spread spiked up to 10/20 majors pips BEFORE the actual close. 10 minutes before. I have a 10/30/2009 screenshot at 9 minutes before the close to prove it.
And why wouldn’t the spreads widen at that time? I wouldn’t be at all surprised to have witnessed spreads widening into the final 1-2 hours of the Friday’s close.
You’re talking about markets that are winding into the close of not only the trading week, but also it’s the last trading day of the month.
Don’t you think the serious & half smart traders will have concluded their trading activity by then? I’m sure I wouldn’t be dawdling around processing orders 10 minutes before the close of a week & month end market.
Yeah, I agree. I can’t see what’s strange about widening the spreads 10 minutes before week close.
Now I know!
I never trade on Fridays, too many of the “biggies” closing positions and balancing their portfolios. Not a place & time for a little retailer like me. D
I can appreciate that 
I don’t particularly shy away from trading on any particular day of the week, but I certainly wouldn’t be looking to take a new trade on into the late Friday afternoon session as London was winding down - that’s just looking for trouble.
I’ve been taught that if a set up can be justified as far as appreciable risk &
safety is concerned, then if everything falls into line, click the button.
Fridays can throw up some very good trading set ups. I suppose it’s whatever suits your personal taste.
I guess it’s partly equivalent to the common wisdom I had growing up that if something funny was gonna happen, it was always the 9th and last race of the day at the track…
Yes, exactly.
I often find that simply being aware of your immediate surroundings – for instance; specific time of day, week, month, quarter. Triple witching, options expiries, a particular area on the chart that has held prior significance, a major fundamental event – stuff that is likely to impact & affect the immediate price action movements, can often keep you out of, or at the very least, forewarn you of trades that might potentially upset your balance.
I realize there are other events can & will influence the price action that maybe we have no prior knowledge of, or influence over, but then if one has a well co-ordinated plan that includes very specific exit criteria & damage limitation cover, it should help to alleviate any nasty surprises.
Of course, if all else fails, a reliance upon pure old common sense will often pull you out of potentially sticky situations. I know that option has worked for me on occasion.
Well the spread didn’t close for the Australia open and 55 minutes into the Asia open the spreads are still 10/20.
Yeah the spreads are still ridiculously high for the majors and jpy crosses, so much for trading tokyo this evening:rolleyes:
The spread closed an hour after the open so maybe their IT people forgot to reset the time zone for daylight savings time.
Sorry guys, I have nothing against Oanda, but as I know it has so many problems and there are much more brokers with better conditions around…Maybe someone can explain me why Oanda is so popular?
GTR Power, it may be not, like any other broker (you know that). It’s just that some people prefer differnet terms of trading. P.S. what kind of problems do you consider to have negative effect on its popularity?
Hmm…I’m just 4 days late as I chance upon this thread. I had a chat with Oanda this monday on the spread in Asian morning, which were totally unacceptable at 10pips, when every other broker was at 2 pips E/U.
They apologized profusely, and admitted it was their error…but couldn’t do anything about it…let’s see if the same thing happens this week.
A stoploss of 10-20 is not good…unless you are trading when there is a lot of volitility in one direction. And you should close your positions out on Friday, even if its a loss.