Be careful usinng a default stop loss with OANDA...it is not what you thhink. The s/l is not based on your filled price, it is based on the market price when you OPEN the ticket. So if you open a ticket ahead of a news release for quicker entry and the price moves fromthen until you submit thhe order, your stop is based on the price when the ticket is openned,not on your fill, or market price when you submit the order. I learned a painful lesson on this today during the JPY rate announcement. What a complete crock that is. What idiot designed that gem? Nothing but a money grab..imo...your stop is min 30..max???? I shall be moving my business elsewhere.
I guess that all depends on the capital one is trading and then what brokers suit a persons needs. My main trading is being set up on the currenex platform as soon as the paper work is processed. My point is this...why set a deafault stop based on a theoretical price at a theoretical point in time? Why base one's risk tolerance on a price that has no risk assoociated to it? It is completely retarded.
I was trying to bring this to the attention of other OANDA users. As I have traded with them for qutie some time, and this was news to me, I am sure there are other users that were not aware of the dynamics of the dafault stop loss feature.
I was thinking of opening an account at Oanda. I'm not sure I understand the problem tho. Could you give an example with numbers of what you mean?
For the most part, OANDA has been good to me. There are many good qualities about this broker. This issue, however, is a problem for how I trade, and thus I must move this account elsewhere. I had never noticed ththis before, as II manually move my stops after. But I was very surprised when I saw what had happened. The rep I spoke to online was a bit of a twit about it as well. Again, just do not want anyone else that is unaware of the mechanics of this feature to find themselves in my position. Not a huge deal anyway as I use low leverage, but I was very shocked at what had happened for sure.
I opened a ticket ahead of the jpy rate annoncement. From the time I open the ticket to the time I shorted the usd/jpy the market moved around alot. Then I place my market order to short and am filled at 115.414 with a "default" stop loss of 30 pips. BUT, my stop loss was actually placed 57 pips away as it was calculated from the market price prevailing when i openned the ticket, (several minutes prior to placing the trade) not the market price of my fill, or the price when i hit sent the order (in cases with slippage). At least this is how it was explained to me....so again, what is the purpose of having risk based upon a price that has NOTHING to do with the actual position??
If you tick TP or SL they will stay put at those figures they're ticked at. They do not adjust with the quoted rate. It's very strange you have not noticed this is the way things are if you've been trading with Oanda for any length of time. Moreover you could have checked the SL level from your trades tab any time. You even see on the chart visually where your red SL line is. If you trade half blind can you really blame the broker. Learn how the platform works and you shall have no problems.
Hmmmm....well as I normally do not leave trade windows open for a length of time prior to placing an order I have (aside from one other occasion, and it was not large and had assumed the reason was slippage ) not noticed the s/l being off of the 30 pips. As well, I did not blame the broker (I am sure I have saved more than this "extra" loss via the tighter spreads), rather question the logic of the current mechanics and highlite this for others so that they do not get surprised by this. You are correct that I could have seen it and moved it, unfortunately I do not use OANDAs charts and do not ever reference them, so ...again I didn't see it. The faullt for the loss is definately on me. The logic behind the mechanics of the dafault stop loss still fails me.