come to think of it FXTrader Has shut down on me a couple of times, that is the connection has stopped, not related to release of an economic report I wasn't too bothered at the time, wondered if it had anything to do with lack of activity since I wasn't trading and no open order, also had mt4 running and that didn't go down is there any way to know what, how, why a realtime application disconnects ? would Oanda know ? would my ISP know ? I use NetWorx to monitor my internet connection which gives a warning if the data transmission drops below x amount in x time, but doesn't monitor individual apps
hard to tell what the reason was, but for me it was a java screw up on my pc a few times ... still not sure if that's oanda's fault though ...
had a disconnection about 8:32 , no problem with mt4 exit and re-start, couple of minutes waiting, starts, just went down but back up tho 'Connected' is yellow, now blank, now red then the NetWorx alarm started going off, but, all modem lights were running and NetWorx wouldn't stop alarming so shut the computer down Oanda back up, Connected is green
this time there was serious disconnect, heard it from people all over the world at the same time. Send them a more than angry e-mail they got to upgrade their infrastructure ... it's not because it's NFP they can allow this ...
it was down 20 minutes here, their software is regularly upgraded, I do not think this is a problem of infrastructure. These NFP moves are relatively tame to what happened a few years ago and my guess is volume is not a whole lot higher than then. I suspect a new way to do business at Oanda, at the very least the upgrades did not lead to a better platform but to a much much worse one, so the agenda is elsewhere.
loads of posts on the Oanda forum, many sarcastic as these disconnections are a regular feature apparently of Oanda's service I'm thinking about writing a letter of complaint to the NFA and CRTC asking for an inquiry/investigation of what exactly goes on at Oanda - repeatedly it seems
it isn't a question of trading the news the disconnections for most was after the release, peak news trading only occurs during the first minute some years ago fxcm used to message they wouldn't accept order 10 or 15 mins prior to the release but they never disconnnected their service while I've had mt demos in the past that stopped updating for a period of time that doesn't happen with the Alpari NY demo I'm currently using or any others I know of what Oanda is doing imo is akin to the use of the MetaQuotes 'Virtual Dealer Plug-ln' http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=209349 if Oanda don't want to accept orders 10 minutes before and after a news/economic release that's one thing, they can inform clients as fxcm used to do, however what they're doing currently is dissing clients in a very underhand and possibly illegal manner
Without getting in the whole Spot/Futures debate, this is one of the reasons I trade FX Futures. OANDA down on news. Shock would've been if they stayed open.