Residence, regulating and company management.

As written on the site, OANDA was established in 1996 and is headquartered in New York with offices in Zurich and Toronto, although neither real, nor mail addresses are stated on the website. It was co-founded by Dr. Michael Stumm, and Dr. Richard Olsen. Communication with the management is impossible. The company is registered with CFTC as a Futures Commission Merchant (FCM), and OANDA is a member of the National Futures Association.

Company's Market Position

The company names itself a 100% online broker, specialized in Forex. As follows from the chart presented on the site, OANDA is ECN in fact. No banks-partners (liquidity suppliers) are mentioned on the site. The company conducts individual accounts, corporate and LLC's, partnerships (Regular, Investment Clubs). Trust services are not offered.

Types of Services Offered

OANDA trades in 32 currency pair, with gold and silver. The term-of-trades are different from many other brokers.

There is no minimum deposit, and you can start trading with as little as $1.

There is also no fixed lot in OANDA, the size of a lot begins with $1.

The company applies narrowing spreads. Spreads on major currency pairs, such as EUR/USD, went from 5 pips initially to 3 pips, then to 2, and finally to 1.5. The process of diminishing of spreads is described on the site, but no exact rules are mentioned.

Traders can choose account leverage from 10:1 to 50:1 for majors. Marginal requirement for exotic currencies are set in size of 4%. The summary table of marginal requirements is placed on the site and repeated on several pages. There is a detailed description of all margin rules on the site, but the link to it can be found only after browsing FAQ.

OANDA pays interest on long positions and charges interest on short positions, all calculated second by second while the positions are open.

The company gives unlimited streaming quotes with possibility of fully hedge clients' positions.
Trading accounts can be opened in USD, EUR, GBP, CHF, CAD, AUD, or JPY. Depositing an account may be done by paper check, PayPal, or wire transfer.

Opening an account is made from the site only.

Traders Support

There is no page for beginners on OANDA site, but the company offers unlimited in time demo accounts both for spot and option trading with detailed user guide, collection of advices and a bookstore with over 4000 Finance and Investment books

Clients may ask for any kind of support though interactive forms and forum. The FXTrade Statistical Information section may be of a great interest. It contains FXTrade Open Orders, FXTrade Open Positions, Long-Short Ratio and OANDA Interest rates. The company does not conduct it's own analytics, but clients are offered to use free or subscription analytical sources of other firms.

In spite of the lack of any news sections on the site, there are links to such sources as «The Economist», «Financial Times», «Reuters», «CNN finance». There is also a Economic Calendar on the site.

The Trading Platform

OANDA offers a Java trading platform. It gives the clients an opportunity to enjoy unlimited streaming quotes, professional tools, including real-time graphs and indicators, professional-strength real-time news and analysis and an economic calendar

Site Design and Ease of Navigation Comments

The design is quite standard and navigation seems comfortable at first. However, finding exact information turned out not to so simple. Despite the fact that the company has an office in Zurich, there is only an English version of the site.

Advantages and Disadvantages

Advantages of OANDA don't seem to be obvious.

Above all, it is impossible to estimate the real cost of trade, firstly because of complication in determining a size of spreads and secondly because the information about term-of-trades is rather obscure. Such kind of confusion could have been done on purpose. Moreover, a complete absence of information about the underlying structure and addresses of offices doesn't make it any better.

The company seems to have the only strong side which is it's help-analytical support. But there is a weak point even here and this is a very poor technical analysis available for a public view. Although a high-quality technical analysis may be available on a payment basis.