I'm 100% for the discussion of brokers and pros/cons/concerns. I just can't say that I share your experience with Oanda so far.
Satisfactory to you is different than satisfactory to me. I don't really use their charts for entry and exit signals, so they suit me just fine. If you want to see price history including spread, check out the "Max/Min" chart type.
The reality is what? Did you mean this as a segue into point number 3?
See my comments at the end. Also, what do you mean, the price you clicked on? If you are clicking on prices that you want, are you not by definition trading on limit orders?
Really? If this is an honest problem for you, check out the built in screen magnifier.
You are correct in your assessment of what will happen if Oanda goes belly-up, and that's the reason I will eventually move on from them.
I recently went live using Oanda and I've been putting in orders ranging between 200,000 and 750,000 units. I've been using market orders and entering on time, not price. I've experienced very little slippage, no more than 2 pipettes (as defined by looking at the difference between what I wanted my TP/SL calculated at in pips and then looking at what was printed on the ticket, as well as the price given when a TP/SL was actually triggered), and one time I received positive slippage of a pipette in my favor.
As far as connection issues, I haven't encountered any in the past few weeks of live trading. Latency of the javaw.exe process to Oanda's servers has always been < 100ms, even during news time.
Where are you getting 2.5-3 from? I am at my desk for 11 hours/day (London and London/US overlap) and besides news time (which you yourself said you wouldn't dream of trading with them during), when does the E/U spread go above 2? I haven't seen it break 1.5 for more than a few minutes in the last three weeks. According to this page, I'm correct for the past week (again, excluding news).
Disliked1. They do not offer charts of a satisfactory standard, which makes it doubly hard to prove where their price was in any given moment.Ignored
Disliked2. They sell the 0.9 pips spread as some sort of mega deal but the reality is -Ignored
Disliked3. I have found i am experiencing non-beneficial slippage a hell of a lot when it comes to market orders. Slippage should work both ways - 50/50 for & against. But i only ever seem to experience loss making slippage with Oanda - coming out of a trade with less profit/more loss than i should have - based on the fact that the price i got filled at was NOT the price i clicked on.Ignored
Disliked4. The deal tickets text is so small, it makes it difficult to read what the price is anyway, even with a super large magnifying glass.Ignored
Disliked5. When the 2nd bubble bursts within the coming months, & we experience the 2nd wave of the financial crisis - that is much more severe than this first wave. If Oanda become bankrupt, your own personal trading funds are NOT protected, as they are NOT held in segregated accounts with another bank. You will join the back of a long queue of Creditors, looking to claim back what is yours from the Administrators. Which may well be impossible.Ignored
As far as connection issues, I haven't encountered any in the past few weeks of live trading. Latency of the javaw.exe process to Oanda's servers has always been < 100ms, even during news time.
DislikedI have concluded that in real terms, their EURUSD spread is actually closer to 2.5 -3 pips on average, when everything is taken into into account. This is under normal market conditions, & does not include news times.
I wouldnt dream of trading news with Oanda as the spreads are usually 10 pips.
Yes but you are still paying roughly a EURUSD 2.5 - 3 pip spread, sometimes 2, sometimes 1 pip, but on average i come out 1.5-2 pips worse off than i should have done.Ignored
Hindsight is 20/20