Has anyone checked out the spread between Oanda and either the interbank market or the CME futures? How much can this differ? Anyone done any statistics? I'm curious about this - not trading any of these, so I don't have the quotes to check it out myself.
0-2 pips is the normal difference between Oanda and other quality price feeds, outside news releases and other fast market conditions. Part of that is often due to Oanda's narrower bid / ask spread. Futures-spot spread is fixed on any given day (based on interest rate differential and number of days to expiration), within about 1 pip, thanks to arb by many players. That's separately for bid and ask, of course, as spot B/A spread can be much wider than futures B/A spread. You don't need to trade any of these to see real-time quotes: http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=56501 And Oanda's demo and real pricing are identical.
Thanks late_apex. I guess it's positive that Oanda keeps their market pretty much in line, although I'd never want to trade with them myself. I was just thinking of potential for arbs, of course. I'm thinking of either doing the futures or going with EBS through a major bank. (Leaning towards the futures right now, but won't make a move until well into next yhear).
If you have sufficient capital to trade on either EBS or Reuters through a major bank, then, most likely, CME currency futures will not offer enough liquidity for your needs. With the possbile exception of Euro FX during the morning US session.
Yes, I've been thinking about liquidity as a possible issue - depending on how aggressive I want to be etc. I think I'd still be ok at CME, at least in EURUSD.