Hi peoples,
This is my first post here, and I am in no way affiliated with any of these brokers. However, I would like to say a few things about my experience on Oanda.
I rely on them for news trading. Period. Nowhere can I get instant execution and exits. I disagree that spreads stay high "for the rest of day" and such a comment makes me wonder if this person has EVER traded with Oanda.
However, there are shortcomings. Oanda's price feed is sometimes off by 2-3 pips. Also, they *do* have a dealing desk, and although I don't believe they manipulate accounts, they do manipulate their clients' platforms by disconnecting them and what not.
Don't believe me?
I have the video:
http://www.gigafiles.co.uk/files/878/Other_News/121906_NZD_Current_Account.avi
(note that it is encoded in XVID and should play in Windows Media Player -- if not then you need ffdshow, which plays just about everything)
This was the New Zealand Current Accounts this week. In this video, you actually see the spike for a second, but that is because I am recording at 1 frame/sec and there is a one second lag or ghost image. In reality, right when the news spike hit, in the flash of an eye, I was disconnected. Since this has happened to me before, I have damage-control procedures in place to exit my trades if I happen to have entered and get disconnected (like this video).
In any case, things have mitigated once I started doing a few things to keep me off of Oanda's radar, which I will be keeping to myself (sorry, but I've seen way too many people risk their livelihoods by sharing on forums to have it blow up in their faces). I'm not sure how long it is before they'll catch on, but for now, they're still excellent for news trading -- much better than any retail broker and definitely better than ECNs for news (with ECNs, you won't get a matched price during news time and will almost always be slipped 25-30 pips -- it makes Oanda's spreads seem rather reasonable). You just have to be aware of some caveats. If you frequently get disconnects, I suggest to always trade with a stoploss or keep track of all your trades and theorize for yourself what criteria they have before manipulating your platform. From my experience, I believe they do have a criteria, and I believe it's tied to profit/losses in pips and not in dollar amounts.
Good luck everyone, and happy holidays!
