The Oanda Corporation, with a daily trading volume of $10.7 billion, is one of the largest Forex trading companies emanating from the San Francisco, California, in the US. The company was founded by Dr Michael Stumm and Dr. Richard Olsen in the 1990’s and is currently under leadership of its CEO, Vatsa Narasimha.
The company offers lower spreads compared to other trading companies in the US. This means that it can be a beneficial choice for smaller investors that can benefit from the no minimum lot size or minimum deposit requirements. Oando also does not charge a commission fee. The company does however charge a broker mark-up on bids. It means that traders pay is a spread based on real-time trading values. This makes the company as a Forex broker a company with low initial cost.
The company offers trading on bonds, stocks and commodities. Although it is trading globally, it is starting to struggle in its domestic market due to the US market that has consolidated resulting in the lack of growth opportunities. In addition the company is finding it problematic to expand its international operations due to the US’ crippling regulations. Still, Oanda utilizes its own fxTrade platform, although it also offers access to the MetaTrader4 trading platform, and does offer a companion app. There are some problems with the mobile app. Although it is functional, it lacks the inability to create alerts or using charting tools. Also clients can’t add currency pairs to watch lists via the app, as this can only be done through the desktop platform.
Still, the platform allows for easy setup, as well as easy set up stop-losses and further progressive orders. On the negative, traders are restricted to add pairs they wish to buy to a watch list. In addition, traders can’t create multiple watch lists and customization is not offered. That said, the platform included over 50 technical indicators and traders can trade over 70 currency pairs.
On the negative, Oanda does not offer much educational support. It does offer some limited webinars and investment articles, but most of the videos are not easy to access. The company does, however, offer customer support 5 days a week, operating from Sunday to Friday. The company’s staff can be reached by live chat, email, phone or fax. Plus, they have offices in Singapore, US, Japan, and Canada.
In terms of fund security, Oando only deals with Tier 1 banks (i.e. Deutsche Bank, J.P. Morgan Chase, Royal Bank of Canada and the Royal Bank of Scotland). Also, the company is regulated to be registered with Futures Commission Merchant (FCM), Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and the National Futures Association.
In conclusion, even with the company’s short falls, it does offer real time pricing, no minimum deposits, as well as no discrimination between types of traders, it is easy to see why Oando is currently the 4th largest Forex trading company internationally. In addition, being a well-established brand, which is well regulated, is an added bonus for the serious traders.
