2012/13 Oanda Reviews

Money refunded in TEN days! They like ‘to float’ your money. Besides, these are MARKET MAKERS, for fools only. The thieves at FXCM refunded my money within HOURS! THX FXCM thieves (stop runners/slippage EXPERTS).

My THIRD broker will be. (no thieves need apply!)

2011/12 Oanda Reviews

May 1, 2011 — Apr 30, 2012

I am a Canadian and I have 4 years of experience trading with MetaTrader 4. I have been trading with OANDA Canada for 1 month. I decided to close my account for 2 reasons:

Number 1: The margin requirements that are calculated by MT4 and what is calculated by the fxTrade platform are very different, over 50% diffrence. This is due to Canadian regulation and as nothing to do with them; here was their reply to my email:

Thank you for contacting OANDA. The reason you have seen different margin requirements between your fxTrade and your MT4 account is because of the Canadian Margin Requirements. Canadian Regulations stipulate each currency pair has specific margin requirements associated with it. The fxTrade platform calculates each of these and combines them in its display of your margin used.

The MT4 platform does not allow us enough flexibility to set proper margin requirements on a per-symbol basis. This means it does not display the correct margin available and margin used for your Canadian account.

To view the correct margin requirements, please check your fxTrade account. Margin closeout levels are calculated on fxTrade.

Number 2: MT4 is not fully supported, they do not properly support magic number, here is what they had to say:

Hello,

For the past three years, I have developed an EA that I have used with success with Gain Capital (www.forex.com). Since last week I have opened an account with you and I have been experiencing some problems.

I think that there is a problem with the synchronization of trades between your fxTrade platform and the MT4 platform.

The problem that I have is that some trades are closed for no reason. My EA does not close trades, when a trade is open it is closed by a TP. Here is a list of suspect trades:

Please let me know what you think.

Regards,

Thank you for contacting OANDA.

MT4 is offered as a trade placement facility. OANDA’s ability to resolve issues on MT4 is sometimes limited by limitations with the MT4 software, which is a third-party trading application.

Unfortunately we do not support EA as well as magic numbers. The magic number is generated by your own EA, and it is not recorded in our system. We corrected the display issue yesterday by assigning new order numbers to the trades from our internal system. Since the new orders were not executed via your EA, they were not assigned with a new magic number.

We have checked the affected trades again, and noticed that there are two trades remaining (ticket xxxxxx and xxxxxx) in your account. You may close these two trades and reopen new positions via your EA to obtain the magic numbers.

Here was my reply:

I understand your point, but let me say that I’m very disappointed. Anybody using MT4 is using it for its ability to use thousands of EA that are commercially available. Any EA out in the market uses a different Magic number. The magic number is need so that the EA knows what trades it owns.

When you correct a trade and do not correct the magic number, the EA loses track of that trade and cannot control it.

If Oanda does not support magic number on correction made by your staff then OANDA is not a reliable broker for MT4.

MT4 allows a user to trade using multiple EA on the same account. The only way that an EA can control the trades that it opens is by the magic number.

In your response, when you say. Unfortunately we do not support EA as well as magic numbers. I’m not asking for support for my EA, I’m just asking to be compliant with MT4. The fact is that EAs need magic number to operate correctly.

Please forward this email to your supervisor so that they know that OANDA is not a reliable MT4 broker.

This information should be made available to all MT4 users.

Here was their reply:

Thank you for contacting OANDA.

OANDA does not have the infrastructure set up to reassign correct magic number if the original one has been deleted due to the fact that MT4 platform is currently a third party platform. However, our technical team is aware of the demand for such features and most likely will be working to improve it in the future. Please note that in normal cases the magic numbers should not be changed and will function correctly. It only happened this time because there was a synchronization issue in our system which caused some trades to be out of sync. This issue has been resolved already, so if you are to place more trades, you shouldn’t experience this problem again. We apologize for the inconveniences caused and will do our best to prevent it from happening again.

I hope this information was helpful. Please contact us if you have any further questions.

Eileen: What is your mother’s maiden name?

ace lu: the highest price was 1.3084 after last friday’s closing

ace lu: ******

Eileen: Thank you.

ace lu: i’ve been monitoring fxcm and esignal and they both confirm my claim

Eileen: One moment please whille I retrieve your account information.

ace lu: even with oanda’s wide spread during weekend it still should not have hit 1.30955

ace lu: with ticket 921127646 i changed stoploss from 1.30905 to 1.30955

ace lu: oanda’s own hourly chart shown 1.30842 was the highest price

ace lu: i firmly believe esignal’s price is the collection of all prices from the world and it shows 1.3084 was the highest

ace lu: [after noon of last friday pacific time]

Eileen: Thank you for waiting.

Eileen: I have taken a look at your stop loss.

ace lu: thanks

Eileen: I can see that your weekend data is hiden.

ace lu: my data feed is esignal. i use ensign windows for analysis

Eileen: Can you please allow your trading platform to show weekend data? You should be able to see that the High Ask price during the time that your stop loss was triggered was at 1.30969.

Eileen: OANDA is a market maker. We may not offer the same prices as the other brokers.

ace lu: i don’t see any weekend price on esignal close to 1.30969. you mean oanda can hunt stops at will during weekend regardless esignal’s (world prices collection) ‘official’ prices? then i would be speechless.

ace lu: i will definitly publish my story on every fx review sites as i can.

ace lu: thanks

Eileen: We do not hunt stops.