I’ve been trading Natural Gas with OANDA fxtrade for a couple months now, and yesterday I noticed something very unusual and scary. NatGas market had one of the biggest rallies yesterday and hit 5 year high making headlines everywhere, but in Oanda’s fxtrade platform that rally appeared as a tiny 10 cents pop. I contacted their customer service and the only answer I got was: Oanda’s prices will always be different from those shown by other sources. I knew that already. I’ve always noticed a 20 cents difference in prices and didn’t really care much about it because the market movement didn’t look suspicious in fxtrade chart - if other sources showed an upward move by 10 cents, oanda’s chart also showed the same. But, yesterday it looked fishy. The market went up by 70 cents, but in Oanda there was just a 10 cents spike. Has anyone using Oanda here experienced the same?
Well, I have the same problem… I have been trading nat gas. Its been in a powerful bull market since mid 2012. It has doubled in price. Very nice market to be betting the long side…
If you see the prices in their charts they almost match the prices of other brokers nat gas cfds or futures. The difference is not relevant. As you say 10 or 20 cents at the most. Not a big deal. As you say when the market rallied 10% in the futures price oanda would show aproximately a 10% move.
But what we see today is, as far as for me, robbery. It is unacceptable. the price today is 6.1 in other cfds provideer and similar in the futures market and in oanda is 5,17…I mean this is ridiculous…it is a 20% price difference :mad: it is as if oanda quoted sp500 by 1500$ today or gold at 1100$ instead of 1315…lol and they say that they have their own prices. How can nat gas rally 20% in one month in the futures market and only 3% in oanda? so it seems to me that every time a market goes up or down substantially and the possibilitie to make money arises, oanda will not allow you to make that money just by saying that they have their own prices. That the futures market may rally 20% one day but the only show a 3% move because they have their own prices. I rather trader futures with wider spreds and changing contracts every month than being treated like a moron by them.
Please, any guy who has been trading the market for years knows that this is an utter scam. Oanda knows that there are some speculators that are riding the bull market in nat gas and are making a killing (not day traders of course…those are taken care of daily) and does not like it at all. So do not offer commodities cfds if you are going to play like this.
nolisito, I think I have the answer now, after days of battle with Oanda reps and interacting with other Oanda clients. The reason behind the discrepancy in price is probably that Oanda’s CFDs do not have an expiry date. If you examine closely, Oanda’s current NatGas chart looks more like the April contract chart
( check out the NGJ14 chart at barchart dot com, sorry not allowed to post links yet )
What they are actually doing is displaying some sort of an average of the front month contract price (March) and the next month contract price (April). On day 1 of the march contract, Oanda’s NatGas chart looked and moved exactly like the March contract chart, but as we are gradually approaching the contract rollover date their chart is looking and moving more and more like the April contract chart. Now, since there is a huge difference between the March and April contract prices, Oanda’s chart looks way off mark. I hope the discrepancy would go away once the contract rollover happens (on 26th feb) because the spread between April and May contract is not too wide. Hope you got my point. But whatever be the reason, I still feel cheated. I was long in NatGas big time!
Yes…I see your point. I actually suspected that it must have something to do with it since the difference between the cash price and the futures april contract 6,1 versus 4,8 that is a huge difference. I do not know the reason. In fact it is the only market that is showing that discrepancy between the nearest and next futures contracts.
the rest of the markets: corn (where I am bullish as well now), sugar (also), oil, soyneans, silver, show a similar pricre between march, april and may contracts. so yes; there is an anomaly with the nat gas markets. It should as you say correct when the the rollover occurs. Lets see what happens
Actually a good idea for trading could be: short the nearest futures and buy the april or may contract…but that is another story
Despite that I feel sort of cheated as well. If they were quoting the current price I would be in a winning position since my last trailing stop at 5.
Actually I sell my position in nat gas when I saw what was happening last weeks and do not feel very confident to trade nat gas with oanda again. I preffer to trade markets that they price more fairly like silver, where I am long since it broke 20.50$.
I hope this does not happen very often. I guess they will do that again when a the next futures contract of any market shows such a big difference.
This is a bit frustrating. I have to look for an alternative to trade commodities probably.
I’ve found that trading futures via CFD’s with fx brokers are a complete waste. You’re much better off opening an account with a futures broker and trade direct with CME, etc.