Some questions about Oanda

Beginner Questions
1

Hi all!

First of all, I just want to say that I was able to understand the foundation of forex because of you guys. Thank you! :slight_smile:

My concern is that I opened up a demo account with Oanda and I’m a little confused if CLOSING an LONG/SHORT open trade (via double clicking on the open trade, select the CLOSE radio button and hit submit) is the same as selling/buying it.

I’ve also read about contracts/lots etc, but I don’t see that on Oanda. All I see is UNITS. Is that the same thing as lots? Any help is much appreciated. Thank you guys/gals!:smiley:

2

I can answer those for ya I think :slight_smile:

A mini lot is 10,000 units
a standard lot is 100,000 units.
you can trade $1, its 1 unit :wink: (not very good profit though. I demo $1 and dont count it if I want to remember to keep tabs on a specific market, cant go lower though :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye: )

As far as your other question when you open a trade your buying or selling one currency and doing the opposite with the other.

For example going short USD/JPY means your selliing the dollar and subsequently buying the yen.
When you close your trade your selling the yen and buying the dollar (and hopfully keeping a healthy profit :slight_smile: )

(I only said shortting and USD/JPY cause I’m waiting for my entry signal :slight_smile: )

I assume thats what your asking…

4

You dont have to, but I do set my SL and TP by default.

Default is trading 10% trading capital, with 1% SL and 2%TP. I kinda guestimate where %1 is going to be, so I may manually say, this is going to need a big SL, so ill take whatever oanda says is 10% for the units available, and maybe ill cut them in half, or in 1/4 or whatever I feel is appropriate.

Moving my SL 5* away from its starting position is not likley for me, but is allowed as I allow myself 0-5% risk, usually right around 1%.

Where I enter and where I exit is determined by why I enterd in the first place, I may enter a scalp trade in which case its a set pips, I can go down 10-20 pips ok with a scalp, I try to get 3-5, after it goes up to 2 pips profit if it goes down to 1, i close it, if it goes up to 3, and then back down to 2 i close it… in otherwords I got a 1 pip trailing stop, manually :slight_smile:

With a longterm trade where I enter and exit is stricly defined by my system, SL is just past where my entry assumptions would have been wrong. So if for exaple it was a double top and i thought it was going to reverse, I’ld put it just slightly past the double top. if it breaks it, it didnt hold, and I was wrong about it holding and its reversal.

As far as my TP I dont actually try to take alot of the table, I try to be correct and maintain a 1:2 R:R, so with that in mind I try to keep it about twice the distance from where i enterd as my SL is, but thas only a rough number, and then I scootch up my SL and TP as time goes on. usually my SL first to break even, then to keep profit, then i may move TP up a little bit so if it suddenly jumps i can catch it, and exit before a following retracment.

All of this is just a system. As far as oanda specific things you just gona know oanda dosnt have trailing stops, and they dont give you enough leverage to really really over trade. you can still overtrade, you just cant go overboard like with most brokers. The other broker i was considering offerd 200:1 leverage… thats all fine and dandy but i dont go over 50:1, so whats 200:1 really go do for me anways? Actually recently since ive been trading better I dont think ive gone past 25:1…