Oanda & using their API

[JTrader]

spot v's futures

Why the obsession with Oanda?

You can trade TS8 with IB and trade the Globex future in a real market with a 1 pip spread rather than an artificial market with a spread upto 2 or 3

JonnyT

Hi

as a trader with limited experience of actual forex trading, less experience of comparing spot forex price action to globex futures forex price action, and no experience of trading globex futures, I favour trading the spot with Oanda (EURUSD usually 1.5 pip spread) than the globex futures EuroFX (usually 1 pip spread) simply because of volume. The spot market accounts for around 96% of all forex trading activity. The rest (including the futures market) account for around 4% of all forexd trading activity. Therefore the potential for spikes, gaps etc. in the futures market would seem somewhat greater. So I guess it comes down to my perception/preconception of "greater safety in greater numbers"!

You can also trade less popular crosses liek AUDUSD at Oanda with a 2 pip spread. I doubt that this is possible at Oanda.

In reality, for each major pair that trades on globex, how significant a difference does there tend to be between the futures price and the spot price at any one time, in terms of smoothness of te chart, spikes - gaps etc. Is it a negligable difference?

Thanks again

jtrader.

 

[JonnyT]

I was just thinking that using Oanda you have to reinvent the wheel and you are not trading a true market. You are trading Oanda's own market. Have a look at some threads on www.elitetrader.com for the dangers of this.

The Globex futures are only really practicable for EUR and GBP

However using TS and an add on you could trade IBs IdealPro Forex spot market. IB use many liquidity providers and act as a proper broker and not a market maker to give a truer fairer market than most other providers.

How financially secure are Oanda? Who owns them?

JonnyT

 

[JTrader]

Oanda - company info

http://fxtrade.oanda.com/about/

About OANDA
Corporate History

OANDA was founded upon the belief that technology, primarily the Internet, would have a significant impact on the "globalization" of the worldwide marketplace and, henceforth, a significant impact on the demand for currency-related products and services. The Company, a Delaware corporation, was established in 1996 and is headquartered in New York City with offices in Zurich and Toronto. OANDA is a registered Futures Commission Merchant (FCM) with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and is a member of the National Futures Association (NFA ID #0325821).

OANDA was co-founded by Dr. Michael Stumm, a professor of Computer Engineering at the University of Toronto, and Dr. Richard Olsen of The Olsen Ltd., a leading econometric research and development firm.
Business Overview

OANDA is a leading technology and financial services provider of currency conversion and localization tools, decision support and risk management applications, database technologies and transaction services. The Company was an early pioneer in the development of proprietary conversion, localization and forecasting technologies for use in the digital economy. Through its affiliation with The Olsen Group (see below), OANDA has access to one of the world's largest historical, high frequency, filtered currency databases. Most recently the Company has developed FXTrade, a proprietary and fully automated Internet-based trading platform that serves as the basis for OANDA's private and white label FX trading solutions.

 

[Hittfeld]

Oanda - company info

But you should check as well for Dr. Olsens first company, which went bust in Switzerland a couple of years ago. Filed for bancruptcy the swiss way - not the american way of chapter 11.

Still consider Olsen And Associates (OandA) a top firm only second to IB.

Regards

Hittfeld

 

[samtron]

How financially secure are Oanda? Who owns them?

JonnyT

This file compares a lot of brokers, I used it last year to compare brokers and must admit if I had based my choice on net asset value I would have chosen Refco hands down! and Oanda would have been much much lower down on my short list!

 

[Hittfeld]

JohnnyT,

what`s your preference nowadays with 4ex: IdealPro or Globex (through IB)?

Thanks

Hittfeld

 

[Anonymous]

If anyone has to doubt Oanda then one would have to doubt the feasibility of FCM, CFTC and NFA, which practically most of the brokers referred to belong to.

 

[JonnyT]

JohnnyT,

what`s your preference nowadays with 4ex: IdealPro or Globex (through IB)?

Thanks

Hittfeld

It depends on several factors such as market, size and time of day so there isn't a one size fits all answer IMHO

JonnyT

 

[JTrader]

The only problem with trading spot forex, using tradestation as the charting package (for trading mechanical trading strategies) is that tradestation use the Gain Capital datafeed, their spot forex dealer. Therefore if you trade with Oanda (or a spot dealer other than Gain Capital), you are basing your backtest results and trade entry and exit decisions upon one set of data, yet actually trading with a different set of data...........

This may mean 1-3 pip price discrepancy at any one time. Would you consider this to be a significant issue, only when trading on smaller timescales, where the targeted profits are smaller?
if so, at what timescales and below do you consider this to be an issue? 5-minute charts and below?

I'm not sure what is worst - using the datafeed of a different broker within your charting package, or using an often jumpy composite datafeed such as GTIS or S&P comstock that both quote the rates of many banks. I suspect that I would prefer to make do with using the datafeed of a different broker to the one that I trade with, if it's not possible to get your broker/dealers datafeed into your charting package (TS8.1). The data would be slightly on both, but at least with the Gain Capital datafeed, the price is less likely than GTIS and S&p Comstock to be jumping all over the place............ .........


Cheers

jtrader.

 

[IBM_Clone]

The only problem with trading spot forex, using tradestation as the charting package (for trading mechanical trading strategies) is that tradestation use the Gain Capital datafeed, their spot forex dealer. .....
Cheers
jtrader.

Tradestation by virtual fact of being hooked into the API is using the Oanda datafeed. A few are already doing this.

 

[Anonymous]

The opportunity provided by the price discrepany of two brokers should be obvious.

Looking at one particular broker by itself, Oanda's charting for example, if you nail down the chart to 5 seconds you can see the opportunities appearing through a 24 hour period, about once or twice an hour.

 

[JTrader]

IBM_clone
Tradestation by virtual fact of being hooked into the API is using the Oanda datafeed. A few are already doing this.

Oh right, I did not realise this. Is it possible to import historical intraday data from Oanda into TS8.1 for strategy design, backtest and optimisation purposes?

If so, how much historical Oanda intraday Oanda data can be imported into TS8.1?

Cheers

jtrader.

 

[JTrader]

Anonymous -
The opportunity provided by the price discrepany of two brokers should be obvious.

Hi

yes Anonymous, I'm aware of the possibility of arbitrage opportunities presented by the price discepancies between certain products. However, I do not really want to go down that road. I simply would want to trade with one broker/dealer based on the chart price provided by one datafeed, whether this datafeed is my broker/dealers datafeed (eg. TS8.1 with Oanda datafeed), or the datafeed of one of my broker/dealers competitors (eg. TS8.1 with Gain Capital datafeed,but still close enough to my brokers prices to not cause a significant problem to the results of my mechanical trading strategies).

Cheers

jtrader.

 

[IBM_Clone]

Oh right, I did not realise this. Is it possible to import historical intraday data from Oanda into TS8.1 for strategy design, backtest and optimisation purposes?

If so, how much historical Oanda intraday Oanda data can be imported into TS8.1?

Cheers

jtrader.

Can't answer your question as I don't use TS myself, only know of its use from my following of a few API related threads. Best to ask on the Oanda forums.
cheers

 

[Anonymous]

based on the chart price provided by one datafeed

I think for that purpose Oanda does serve a useful dual purpose.

 

[IBM_Clone]

Oanda -> Tradestation

http://www.snapdragon.co.uk/services/OATS_Documentation.doc

 

[JTrader]

Oanda -> Tradestation

http://www.snapdragon.co.uk/service...cumentation.doc

Interesting option IBM_Clone. I suppose as time goes by, the facilities for auto-mechanical trading offered by the competing forex brokers, will become more advanced, widespread and reliable.

Funnily enough, automated mechanical trading is not such a big deal to me, as i would not mind manually executing trade entry and exit signals generated by the mechanical signals of tradestation EL strategies for instance.

Having the option of a completely hands free approach seems a good thing though.

But for my intraday trading, if I couldn't even manage to click a mouse button, manually execute trade signals, quickly check the signal and execution, but would rather have this process fully automated, so that I would not have any distractions from - Jerry Springer, The Wright Stuff, This Morning, Home and Away, Neighbours, Cash in the Attic, Can't cook won't cook etc. etc. (not that I'd pollute my mind with any of this dribble ) - then I'd have to look at myself and question my dedication, work ethic, motivation, desire, commitment etc. !

If I was fully automating my trading, if I was on hand, I should want to check that the trade signal and execution was good, so there would not be that much of a difference between automated mechanical and manual mechanical trading in any case, in terms of workload.

Cheers

jtrader.

 

[Anonymous]

There is one way which ensures a trader can make money just by opening an Oanda account. He doesn't have to know anything about trading: just open, deposit, and earn continuous interest.

 

[JTrader]

Difference between your brokers/dealers tradeable price and the chart price

Hi

unless you trade the futures, direct market access, or tradewhatever you do trade with a marketmaker such as Oanda, CMC, Capital Spreads etc. (forex, stocks, indices) using the market makers own charts, I suppose that there will always be minor differences between your datafeed, and the tradeable prices available with your broker at any one time. i.e. Trading UK stocks with CMC spreadbet using the esignal charts with the LSE datafeed. Or, trading index futures using the Globex datafeed, but trading with CMC spreadbet. Until a time if/when charting packages have universal access to the quotes of all marketmakers/dealers - this will continue.

With forex for example, I notice that the Oanda spread on EUR/USD was always with 0-3 pips of the CMC quoted price during a short spell of observation. Therefore trading with Oanda while using the Tradestation charts (Gain Capital datafeed/tradeable prices), similar 0-3 pip differences can be expected.

Whether trading a strategy on a discretionary basis, or trading a strategy on a mechanical basis, while this may not be ideal, I do not believe that it is a huge problem, and the longer the timescale that you are trading on, thus the bigger your targeted profits, the less significant an issue this becomes. So while such a difference in prices between your charts and the price you can trade at may cause some problems on 1-minute charts, the price difference may not cause a significant problem on 10-minute charts.

Does this make sense? What is your opinion on this issue? How closely must your datafeed resemble your broker/dealers tradeable prices? Have you looked into this matter in any detail?

Cheers

jtrader.

 

[Anonymous]

If one deposits an amount of money, and that money earns interest paid into his account everyday. If he risks only that amount of interest which he earns per day by trading once per day, then his capital can be preserved for quite a long long time. Even if he doesn't know anything about charts, interest rate differentials, arbitrage, etc, etc.