I am a Canadian and I have 4 years of experience trading with MetaTrader 4. I have been trading with OANDA Canada for 1 month. I decided to close my account for 2 reasons:

Number 1: The margin requirements that are calculated by MT4 and what is calculated by the fxTrade platform are very different, over 50% diffrence. This is due to Canadian regulation and as nothing to do with them; here was their reply to my email:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Thank you for contacting OANDA. The reason you have seen different margin requirements between your fxTrade and your MT4 account is because of the Canadian Margin Requirements. Canadian Regulations stipulate each currency pair has specific margin requirements associated with it. The fxTrade platform calculates each of these and combines them in its display of your margin used.

The MT4 platform does not allow us enough flexibility to set proper margin requirements on a per-symbol basis. This means it does not display the correct margin available and margin used for your Canadian account.

To view the correct margin requirements, please check your fxTrade account. Margin closeout levels are calculated on fxTrade.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Number 2: MT4 is not fully supported, they do not properly support “magic number”, here is what they had to say:

Hello,
For the past three years, I have developed an EA that I have used with success with Gain Capital (www.forex.com). Since last week I have opened an account with you and I have been experiencing some problems.
I think that there is a problem with the synchronization of trades between your fxTrade platform and the MT4 platform.
The problem that I have is that some trades are closed for no reason. My EA does not close trades, when a trade is open it is closed by a TP. Here is a list of suspect trades:
Please let me know what you think.
Regards,
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Thank you for contacting OANDA.

MT4 is offered as a trade placement facility. OANDA's ability to resolve issues on MT4 is sometimes limited by limitations with the MT4 software, which is a third-party trading application.

Unfortunately we do not support EA as well as magic numbers. The magic number is generated by your own EA, and it is not recorded in our system. We corrected the display issue yesterday by assigning new order numbers to the trades from our internal system. Since the new orders were not executed via your EA, they were not assigned with a new magic number.

We have checked the affected trades again, and noticed that there are two trades remaining (ticket xxxxxx and xxxxxx) in your account. You may close these two trades and reopen new positions via your EA to obtain the magic numbers.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Here was my reply:

I understand your point, but let me say that I’m very disappointed. Anybody using MT4 is using it for its ability to use thousands of EA that are commercially available. Any EA out in the market uses a different Magic number. The magic number is need so that the EA knows what trades it owns.

When you correct a trade and do not correct the magic number, the EA loses track of that trade and cannot control it.

If Oanda does not support magic number on correction made by your staff then OANDA is not a reliable broker for MT4.

MT4 allows a user to trade using multiple EA on the same account. The only way that an EA can control the trades that it opens is by the magic number.

In your response, when you say : “Unfortunately we do not support EA as well as magic numbers”. I’m not asking for support for my EA, I’m just asking to be compliant with MT4. The fact is that EAs need magic number to operate correctly.

Please forward this email to your supervisor so that they know that OANDA is not a reliable MT4 broker.

This information should be made available to all MT4 users.

Here was their reply:

Thank you for contacting OANDA.

OANDA does not have the infrastructure set up to reassign correct magic number if the original one has been deleted due to the fact that MT4 platform is currently a third party platform. However, our technical team is aware of the demand for such features and most likely will be working to improve it in the future. Please note that in normal cases the magic numbers should not be changed and will function correctly. It only happened this time because there was a synchronization issue in our system which caused some trades to be out of sync. This issue has been resolved already, so if you are to place more trades, you shouldn't experience this problem again. We apologize for the inconveniences caused and will do our best to prevent it from happening again.

I hope this information was helpful. Please contact us if you have any further questions.

If you want to keep your hard earned cash, stay away as they are up to all the tricks. Hunting stops, reversing candles even in long term trends as soon as you enter, platform disconections and I could go on. I have placed nearly 2000 trades with Oanda over this six month period and on smaller trade values everything is great having a 90% success rate but as soon as you increase your pip values I get 100% negitive trades wiping out all the prophit made over weeeks of trading. I thought it was just me as they could not be so obvious but as I have researched this further I am not the only one that this is happening to. I can now see why 95% of people fail at forex, it is not the trader but the sea of sharks waiting to con them with systems geared against you. I am going to sign up to a ECN broker as at least they can't mess with your trades (as often) Lost enough money to Oanda but at least had the sence to get out early and I would suggest you do the same.

Oanda is not a serious broker, they hunt stop losses, see in pictures : http://despe906.blogspot.com/2011/07/oanda-thievery-shabby-broker.html
Besides, their deceptive price move is a trap for scalpers, which grows your 0.7 EUR/USD spread effectively to 3pip spread.

No dealing desk, No commissions, No introducing broker (why pay others?), No requote,
MT4, Iphone platform, tight spreads, minimum trade 1$ (exactly, 1$!), quote and trade 24/7, no rollover, receive or pay interest on entire account, fully regulated CFTC -NFA, demo unlimited, OPEN POSITIONS AND OPER ORDERS (very, very good!)

I have nice experience with oanda in using demo account. I am starting live account with this shortly.

I have been trading forex for 2 years, had a live account with many of the big brokerage firms (alpari, fxcm, fxopen etc), but now I'm moving to Oanda, because of their low spreads, and because they are one of the big names... I tell you only go to the well established companies, small new brokers offer -1 pip spreads and 100% bonus ... come on, wake up... Okay back to Oanda, even though I trade on mt4 as well like the previous reviewers, I have a solution to the online platform problem, simply run your indicators in an mt4 demo account and trade on Oanda platform with tight spreads. That's what I'm going to do.

I give no recommendation since I do not have a live account with them yet. Will update on my progress later.
Happy pippin' all.

Oanda have a very good customer service.they answer my question via email very fast. Their manage fund very fast too.i deposit via paypal.
But i'm deducting 1 star because they don't use the mt4 platform that i use recently.
- am very recommended this broker