problems logging onto Oanda?

Just my opinion, but I can't see how any broker, particulary ones with the market maker model can offer the kind of service everyone is after.

If the Bids/Offers dissapear on their interbank feed, it would be dumb of them to offer a better spread than whats physically available to them. They'd lose too much money. They would be basically giving their retail customers money when they shouldn't.

With the speed at which the price jumps around, no matter how fast their own feed is, the risk is enormous.

This is why I'm pretty sure all "market maker" brokers will eventually restrict news trading the same way, by only offeriing genuine news time spreads. It sucks, but that's how it is.

The only fair system during high volitility is one where there is genuine matching of orders. i.e. You put in your "offer" and someone either takes it or they don't. To my understanding that's where the ECN model would be better. But this means standard lots. Doesn't it?

Anyway, I'm sure I'll bother with news trading. Maybe if I get an ECN account later on I might think about it. But for the moment I'll just stick to just trading normally.

Cheers,
Bundy

BTW, The service should be still available, not "disconnected" , that's just wrong, they are better off being honest.

heres a reply after i posted some nasty comments on how oanda is tryin to screw news traders (conspiricy?):


The company does not try to blame something else for problems, when it is CLEARLY they problem.. We have seen them many times come here and post when these things happen.

This one was answered directly by the man himself, In This Thread at 9:04 am

We have many people come here and post that they lost their connection, only to have 20 others say that they are connnected, and were never disconnected. The disconnected person still blames Oanda, and thinks they should fix it. In this case, obviously, they SHOULD say that it is NOT on their end, right?

BTW - I have seen him post on a Sunday AM about a problem that they were working on. See that happen somewhere else? Don't think so.

Although it would be nice to have 100% up-time, it is not always going to happen. Sometimes, it is beyond your control - like a company's ISP has problems, or (remember this?) MCI has a major problem knocking out access to 1/2 the nation, and those that still had access (high speed even) took 1 minute to load a web page.

Every broker seems to have problems from time to time. What REALLY matters is how they handle it when they do, and that is one of the reasons that I am here (among many, many, others).

Source: http://www2.oanda.com/cgi-bin/msgboa...;f=17;t=002532

thoughts?

Enough with the conspiracy talk - Oanda was down for a few minutes, just like any broker could be. As someone in that first thread you linked to said, obviously it is in Oanda's best interest to have their system open and available to as many people as possible at all times. It does make sense that some people could log on and some couldn't - networks and databases can be partially operational. Maybe one server was down and they had a hard time with the volume, it could be one of fifty things.

As merlin would wisely say focus on your trading - not your kooky broker theories. Although there are some evil, evil brokers out there Oanda has proved itself to not be in this class. Whether or not you choose to go with them your choice but they are the highest rated broker on a multitude of independent websites, you don't get that by screwing people over.

I kind of like the conspiracy talk. It’s fun and adds a little bit of intrigue to the whole situation. I don’t think ANYONE has a right to come in here and say what we should and should not discuss or when we should stop because “that’s enough”.

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Having said that, I think Oanda is having some serious issues and may be adapting a little, but NO WAY are they beyond reproach. Oanda is not beyond reproach.

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I do not News trade. Let me repeat I do not News trade. To me, that’s nuts. So my issue with Oanda is, that over the past few months I have noticed that there have been, now a few times, where the market on the dollar was in what I’ll refer to as “ extra opportunity mode”, for my trading style, which means, steady winning. And my platform conveniently goes down. Does it go down on purpose? Dunno. Does it go down because a bazillion other traders recognize that we are now in extra opportunity mode and everybody starts buying and selling and the system can’t handle it? Dunno. Has there been the presence of extra opportunity mode and my platform didn’t crash? Yes. Will we ever know the truth? Probably not. Does it matter? No. Just move to where you can get executed. There are some good choices. A huge problem for me was illuminated this week when I couldn’t protect my positions further than they were already protected after the market broke out. That was something I had turned a blind eye to in the past, but now with the state of my trading business I can no longer. When there is a problem, broker side, or my side, or in between, I must be able to adjust orders and buy and sell. It’s a cold hard fact.

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Re: some people being up and some people being down, I think that is defintely happening, but NOT because of who they are or anything like that, I think that’s just a technical issue.

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I do think that news traders though are going to have a problem. I think Oanda is aware of the fact by now, especially with the explosion in News trading related talk on forums, that they can be taken advantage of. I know it for a fact that Richard Olsen knows this. And they will protect themselves. Eventually, maybe this week, news traders will have to earn their money a different way.

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I typically don’t even look at prices, in particularly spreads, around news times because I’m not interested in trading, so what do I care what the spread is? I’m looking at what’s happening in the marketplace as a whole. But the other day, around a UK announcement I decided to look at the spreads for shits and grins and I saw that the GBPUSD was 15. That’s nuts!!! That is so disadvantageous to the trader. It’s so unnecessary to be trading around those times, really, it’s laughable.

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Well that’s my 2 cents. Feel free to continue discussing the conspiracy theory, but do it after you take 100% responsibility for your trading, and that includes where you trade. I think that’s the real message American Teek was trying to convey and is a complete and unequivocal fact about being a successful trader.

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Peace

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-"Eventually, maybe this week, news traders will have to earn their money a different way. "
What do you mean by this? Do you have "insider" info on what Oanda is planing to do with news traders? Or will they continue to have "technical difficultys?" Just wondering your thoughts? And you know for a fact about Richard Olsen... can you eleborate more on this?

No problems here, ....Saturday morning they were down for maintainance untill noon PDT.

NOW!!! Disconnected by Oanda again...

for me too,

a few times some minutes ago, but now its working

Yes, but I cannot watch my UK news trade and my exit was bad...

The platform of Oanda is based on Java through Web page and some time the link with server is not refreshed in time. After some seconds a losing a conection the platform wait one minut to reconnect OR choose yourself to connect imediatly. Maybe a Oanda Java programmator must modifed this interval time to itself reconnect and reconnect

I always love the threads where somebody spams and then all the people who post in that thread start lambasting the spammer, and posting pictures of spam cans and stuff. I always chuckle at that. I'm like, man these guys really care about some spammer.

But man, flyhigh, that is audacious!!
Have you even been around here for a few minutes man?

That ain't gonna fly.

Me personally I don't give a hoot, but these mods don't play.

Smjones will be looking for you man

hehe, conspiracy!

If it is their server, hope they fix it. But Oanda does lose money if news traders comes in and trys to trade. So there "may" be a reason why this is happening. Its that or a zillion people log in during news time to just look at charts and stuff.

Read the facts regarding Oanda before selling rumors:

May 2006 Adjusted Net Capital
$31,542,422

Net Capital Requirement
$2,634,634


June 2006 Adjusted Net Capital
$33,861,650

Net Capital Requirement
$2,826,559

Really looks like "newstraders" are just the death knell for Oanda since it only increased its Adjusted Net Capital by $2.3 million (9%?) between May and June!!

C'mon guys, we're talking about a $1.5 - 1.9 trillion market. It was here before you started trading and will be here long after our kids stop trading.

Yes, but in may and june, Oanda didnt widen its spreads like it is today. I guess their liquitiy is dried up or something, for example, 15 pip spread on the GBP/USD on the CPI trade. Something to think about, its that or i am a total noob and need to go back to forex101

That's a joke right?

Think about it.

How many traders would have to join Oanda, between July 1 and today August 15th, that traded "live" (not demo) and successfully traded substantial amounts of money (leverage is only 50:1) to reduce Oanda's net adjusted capital (which is relatively higher than most of the other oft-mentioned brokers in this forum)? Yeah, that was a joke. lol

And by the way, I'm not an Oandaian.

I can't always establish a connection with Oanda. I've tried different computers, browsers, internet connections, etc... and still have problems every now and then regardless of market volatility.

I like almost everything about Oanda except for the Java platform, my connection problems, and no trailing stops.

Hi

I am very sad to add to the list of people being disconnected at news breaks.
In the last 2 weeks I have been disconnected on the very minute for all really volatile US news breaks.

I write here to ask for more Oanda customers to encourage Oanda to add more hardware to handle the transaction peeks at news breaks.

Please note that I am a software professional and have full control of the internet connection and all aspects of Java.
This is clearly a problem with high transaction load, and have very little to do with business decisions.

During the heavy load periods, the response from Oandas server is delayed. If the response it to much delayed the Oanda FX trade platform will disconnect.
Now remember that if you have a bad internet connection it will add to the delayed response.

Action points:
1. Make sure your internet connection is perfectly functioning.
2. Write to Oanda and encourage them to add more hardware.

cheers

Agree with you s5804, the problem is link time with servers (my is 125ms from Romania to Germany and at the end to server at oanda in US).I trade live and in one week maybe two or three time I lose a connection