OANDA shutting down on news

[Wallace]

I think Oanada are one of the best fx brokers to 'scalp' with since their spreads don't
fluctuate plus B/S/C executions are Instant, and during rth the spread is usually 0.9
pips, it has though lately increased to 1.2 pips

as to widening spreads, usually the maximum for the eurusd is 10 pips and I've seen
it as high as 20 pips during the May weekend Greece funding announcement
http://fxtrade.oanda.com/why/spreads/recent
I haven't compared if and how wide other broker spreads become at the same time
as the Oanda spread widens, so can't say if other brokers also responded at the
same time as Oanda and how wide their spreads went. old FXCM example:
http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=142708

 

[bugscoe]

Quote from TRS:

Exactly. You help balance their book.
Imagine trying to scalp with OANDA

Futures or InterBank if you are a trader.

I do every day. 2 - 5 pips is where I live.

 

[chaffcombe]

Wallace kindly put up the link to OANDA recent spread history, which is worth commenting upon. Generally speaking OANDA's spread is very competitive, but if you take a second look, you will see the green line spike frequently in each pair during the course of the week. This is primarily the 'flash-widening' I referred to earlier over news events.

None of this is a particular problem from market order entries, as you can see in advance what you are getting, but it plays financial havoc on all stop losses, and any stop-limit orders. Because of this my contention is that OANDA is not the place for scalpers, breakout players and any others that a looking to quickly jump on short-term trends.

~chaffcombe

 

[TRS]

Quote from bugscoe:

I do every day. 2 - 5 pips is where I live.

Same here. I do it in Futures land.
I tried OANDA Demo 4 or 5 years ago. Wasn't that impressed with the stability. Good that things working for you.
What size can you get filled on @OANDA?

 

[bugscoe]

Quote from TRS:

Same here. I do it in Futures land.
I tried OANDA Demo 4 or 5 years ago. Wasn't that impressed with the stability. Good that things working for you.
What size can you get filled on @OANDA?

Anywhere up to 1,000,000 units. Best execution I've found, other than the days when there are connection problems of course.

 

[trade2live]

Quote from chaffcombe:

What you need to know about OANDA is that they 'flash-widen' their spread whenever there is a news event. Generally this only lasts for 45 seconds or so, but sometimes it's considerably longer.

What's important is understanding the consequences of this.

Firstly it will take out any S/L's that are too close.

Secondly, it all but prohibits placing 'break-out' limit orders either side of the price, because both sides risk being triggered without any genuine movement in the underlying pair.

OANDA is OK if you are a contrarian and always buy when things are going down, and sell when thing are going up. However scalpers, break-out and trend traders get killed.

~chaffcombe
www.futurestech.com.au

I have been trading with OANDA for years so I know them, it used to be an excellent broker, until about 2 years ago, when it became very difficult to trade on news, as the spread systematically widened up to 50 pips . But now anything goes, it's gone to shit, sometimes charts dont update, orders are delayed, and then disconnections .

 

[drm7]

Quote from Wallace:

I think Oanada are one of the best fx brokers to 'scalp' with since their spreads don't
fluctuate plus B/S/C executions are Instant, and during rth the spread is usually 0.9
pips, it has though lately increased to 1.2 pips

as to widening spreads, usually the maximum for the eurusd is 10 pips and I've seen
it as high as 20 pips during the May weekend Greece funding announcement
http://fxtrade.oanda.com/why/spreads/recent
I haven't compared if and how wide other broker spreads become at the same time
as the Oanda spread widens, so can't say if other brokers also responded at the
same time as Oanda and how wide their spreads went.

This is the feed from Dukascopy during last week's NFP report. Note how the spread blew out to over 20 pips follwing the announcement. Oanda's spread was about 10 pips. ECN's lose liquidity on news events as well. I am disappointed at Oanda's server crash on Friday, though. Not a good sign.

 

[Peternam]

Quote from drm7:

This is the feed from Dukascopy during last week's NFP report. Note how the spread blew out to over 20 pips follwing the announcement. Oanda's spread was about 10 pips. ECN's lose liquidity on news events as well. I am disappointed at Oanda's server crash on Friday, though. Not a good sign.

How did you make that chart ?

 

[Wallace]

I'm not sure there's any prevention against Stops getting hit due to spread widening
it must happen with all brokers. I don't use Stops so don't have the problem
what I don't like are those sudden revesals that occur for seemingly no good reason
where the price spikes up or down for 10 or 20 pips then goes back to where it was

this is an old thread with a chart illustrating an NFP release - futures v spot
' 6E vs eurusd nfp release (news) trading '
http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=172655

this is a recent thread related to the Oanda platform. I didn't experience last Friday's
outage - was it universal or limited to some users only ? I may have been sleeping
when it occurred so don't know about it
Oanda's platform is quite old - that's to say it should have all the bugs worked out
but it's dependant on the Java platform, and as such between Jave code changes
and what Oanda presumably may have to re-code, there might be some instability
from time to time - tho there ought not to be
' Oanda FXTrade Unreliable '
http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=210889

another matter is ISPs; the previous Zen-Fire data feed outage was related to some
only, of the ISPs Zen-Fire was using for data transmission:
' Concerns about Mirus '
http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=205036
the above is a problem I have with Globex trading that if and when my, their's, the
exchange's feed goes down I have - so far as I know - no way to exit a trade -
unlike fx brokers where - unless the phones go down - I can and have phoned the
broker - Oanda - to have them close my trade - no problem
also with a multi-branch broker such as FXCM - Alpari ? - one can access one's
account via a branch office if the office where one's account is located is unable to
be contacted - this happened several years ago with the NE brownout that not only
knocked out power but also landlines and cell phones

 

[drm7]

Quote from Peternam:

How did you make that chart ?

I downloaded the tick data from Dukascopy's site (available for free) into excel, and made an excel chart. The chart type is "lines on 2 axes." I took out the connecting lines for the bid/ask points for clarity.