High frequency trading won't work at Oanda. Our high-frequency scalper is written on c++ and runs on a dedicated server which executes on a Currenex hub. It will never work on Oanda. At the end of the day, they are still a market maker, but I agree that they work for lower volume trading.
I agree. If you read the article, they have a great analogy about Oanda, that they are th ETrade of forex trading. And I think there is a need for this type of firm out there for people who are no where near as experienced as you or I or do the volume we do. But for the little guy who needs the simple platform and is more of a swing trader, then they are probably the best market maker out there. There are still risks involved, but not everyone is smart enough or sophisticated enough to trade on the professional level
I agree with you cstfx. itrader911, there are a few ECN-type options out there if you want to do higher frequency trading. EFX/MB Trading is one, but their commissions are probably the highest in the industry. You can also go with a Currenex broker, but in my opinion, the Currenex GUI is the biggest piece of s*%! platform for discretionary traders in existence. Recent changes also results in a lot of order rejections when you're manually scalping. When we fund a discretionary (manually clicking) trader on a Currenex hub, we use an alternate platform. Right now, we're using ChoiceFX, but this will add about $8 per million to the execution cost. For our new high-frequency algo trader, we have been using the BGC Currenex hub and the system runs in a dedicated server with a 2ms ping time to the Currenex server in New York. As cstfx explained, this tends to get pretty complicated fast for the average trader. We're also waiting for two liquidity hubs to be finished which aggregate prices. This will be the ideal home for our high frequency auto scalper. There are many funds and institutions that use their own aggregate hub nowadays to get access to many price feeds at once.