Oanda FXTrade

[peat]

Heres a thread to discuss the platform , now that I'll be using it !

First off before we discuss features, issues etc I'll ask a question.

Is it possible to run FXTrade and FXgame simultaneously? I find opening one shuts the other down....

Points of interest to me with FXTrade

1/ As mentioned before , it has Gold and Silver ! And with no minimum trade size I can scale in slowly - great!

2/ Variable spreads - As mentioned in NZD thread these are quite large during weekends and until midday on Monday (when only NZ and Oz are trading I presume) and I understand they widen significantly during news eg Non-Farm Payrolls.

3/ I read the manuals y'day and discovered more about using the Fib indicators. If you draw a trendline from a low to a high then you can right click on it and apply any of the Fib indicators such as Retracements, Arcs, Time Zones or Speed Lines. This solves the problem I've had of not knowing how exactly to apply those indicators. Excellent!

4/ BoxOptions!! Just like options or DNT's. Draw a box and choose Hit or Miss and Oanda will quote you a price and a reward if your prediction is correct. Anyone use these??? Sounds interesting but I've never done it. Tried to do it in FXGame but wasnt working for me i.e I couldnt draw the box itself...

[arco]

Peat

First off.........I like the Oanda platform. Its simplistic and functional....thats all I need......Oanda keep making improvments.....
..........on my wish list I have a trailing stop function.

Re you questions.
Yes, same problem here....cant run trade/demo together. However, if you have a seperate computer - no problem. Thats how I work with both.

Fibs - I just place and pull to the desired target. A recent upgrade means you can also modify the endpoint - this also applies to TLs.

I dont use Box Options on the trade account....had the same problem with the demo.......I think the Oanda forum has a bit of info on using them.

NFP, etc....most if not all FX dealers widen spreads on special announcments. I keep well away from trading these events, its a scary place to be....unless you dont mind the risk.

arco

[peat]

here (using your Eur/Chf short and extreme targets I did a box option as shown here and note the top left of the graph tells you what the box cost and what it will pay. Doesnt seem like very good odds to me
A very out of the money HIT box option costing $100 only returns $135!!

[AMR]

Any thoughts on how it's going after a few trades?

I just signed up to the FX game today after reading about it on the beginner's thread. Seems much better than Marketmaker so far, but still no elusive trailing stop.

[Steve]

Peat, could you give a comparison between Oanda FXTrade & CMC Markermaker?

[peat]

I wrote about MarketMaker here

http://www.sharetrader.co.nz/showthread.php?t=4279


Oanda is so much better tho - its hardly worth comparing and if you want to find out how good it is just use the Demo version Fxgame and you will soon see how its very intuitive and user friendly and its web based. It needs Java (which is pretty standard) and a little bit of setup eg adding it to your trusted sites and allowing pop ups , do those at the beginning and thats it.
Theres no trailing stop in either of these two platforms - if you really want that try GFT's platform DealBookFX.

Oanda's FxGame doesnt offer silver or gold tho whereas FxTrade (the real version) does. But all the indicators and other functions are there

The only reason I would use MarketMaker now is because it offers more (a lot more) instruments to trade eg Indices Shares and Commodities.

Hope that helps.

[Steve]

Thanks Peat.

[peat]

The issues I wrote about in the General chat thread resurfaced on my home machine and so I used live chat (within FXTrade) to question them about what was going on. They confirmed that there were changes to the platform over the weekend.
Heres what they told me re getting the metals to show in your selected pairs (as they had disappeared, and the selection and order of currencies had reverted to default)

OANDA: On chart where the currencies are displayed... right next to the Quote List and Quote Panel tabs there's a small box with a capital F please click this
OANDA: A User Preference window should pop-up
OANDA: There is a small arrow in a box next to currencies
OANDA: Please click this to drop the box and you will see commodities listed separate to currencies

so it would seem that the update threw a few things out

[peat]

FX Desktop
I'm finding this really useful. Just a much faster way to access the customary interface. Its not even starting up the browser process either, so could save some you some memory usage if necessary.



FXDesktop

Get faster access to FXTrade, FXGame and FXNews with a direct server connection. FXDesktop adds login icons to your desktop—you can sign in without even opening your web browser.

http://fxtrade.oanda.com/forex_tradi...xdesktop.shtml

[peat]

A new version of FXTrade came down the pipes today... it would seem only a few subtle changes. But it took me a while to find Fibonacci aaaargh I was screaming but no there it is hiding with the other trendlines.