Oanda - Pros and Cons for Beginners
OANDA (“Olsen AND Associates”) is an American broker that has been offering brokerage services to clients all over the world for more than 25 years. It also has a wide range of trading instruments.
As more and more people are interested in investing their money and making a profit from Forex trading, we created a review of the Oanda broker to help them decide whether Oanda is a good Forex broker for beginners or not. This review aims to explain what are the Oanda fees, their pros and cons and how it compares to its competitors.
What is a Good Broker for Beginners?
At the beginning of this review, we would like to present to you what are the best features of a good broker for beginners and why. Here are certain aspects beginner traders should pay attention to when choosing a broker:
Low Minimum Deposit
Many beginner traders do not want to deposit a lot of money in their trading accounts because they do not want to spend much money. A low minimum deposit is usually associated with better trading conditions.
Low fees
It is not a secret that many beginner Forex traders are not as successful as they wish to be, and they either experience losses or have very small profits. The best brokers for beginners have low trading and withdrawal fees to allow their users to minimize their losses and increase profits.
Special accounts for beginners
A lot of beginner traders do not have enough trading experience to make successful trades and gain big profits. And so, demo and cent accounts are great ways for them to trade at lower risks and gain trading experience.
Sometimes, Investment Programs like copy trading or PAMM accounts can also help beginner traders make profits.
Easy account opening
Certain brokers might decline some registration applications due to the lack of trading experience of the trader or their relatively low income. And so, brokers who accept all applicants and confirm the applications in a short time are better for beginner traders.
Easy to use Trading Platform
Having an easy-to-use trading platform is one of the most important features of a good broker for beginners because it allows traders to do their market research a lot quicker and makes the trading experience more enjoyable. Read more in the article: OANDA Currency Conversion.
Good Educational Programs
Educational programs are a great way for brokers to attract more users and for beginner traders to learn how to place successful trades and improve their trading skills.
Nice customer support
Whenever traders experience a problem or an inconvenience, there should be a good customer support service to help them fix it. If a broker’s customer support is not helpful enough, most users do not feel comfortable trading with it.
Oanda For Beginners - Review
Oanda Minimum Deposit
A minimum deposit is the minimum amount of money that the broker accepts to be deposited into a trading account. At the moment, minimum deposits are usually low for most brokers that want to offer better trading conditions for beginners. Oanda has very low minimum deposits compared to its competitors because it is just $1.
Oanda Minimum Deposit And Payment MethodsOanda Fees
All brokers have trading fees for their users, but some brokers have higher fees than others. The Oanda fees are considered low compared to its competitors. For example, the average EURUSD spread is one pip. For traders who want to trade at lower spreads, it offers a commission plus core pricing system that has a lower spread, but traders also have to pay $40 per million USD traded.
Oanda also does not have withdrawal fees for monthly withdrawals through a debit or credit card. However, Oanda charges a withdrawal fee of $20 for bank/wire transfers and a $15 fee for withdrawing to a credit or debit card more than once a month.
However, Oanda has an inactivity fee of $10 that is charged after 12 months of inactivity.
Oanda Accounts For Beginners
Like many other brokers, Oanda has a free demo account for beginners that allows them to gain trading experience and experiment with new strategies, and all gains or losses are hypothetical. However, it does not have a cent account. A cent account is a hybrid version between a demo and a live account, and all prices are denominated in cents instead of dollars, euros, or other currencies. And so, beginners can learn how to trade with a lower risk and with the possibility of making some tiny profits.
Oanda Investment programs
The OANDA broker allows its clients to combine active trading with passive investing. The broker has developed its own service FxManager. The availability of investment programs enables the company's clients to receive additional income, even if they have only just begun trading in the financial market. Additionally, experienced traders can become managers and earn passive income.
Oanda account opening
The process of creating an account with Oanda is not different from registering with most brokers. All it takes is a few simple steps, which are:
Go to the Oanda.com website and click on the “Create Account” button
Select the country you live in and continue
Create a username, password and enter your email address
Enter personal details like your name, date of birth, and phone number
Select your citizenship
Enter your address
Enter your employment status, annual income, and source of funding for trading activity
Answer some questions regarding your trading experience and pass a short test that assesses basic knowledge about Forex trading
Add proof of ID and residence
This is a short process that takes only a few minutes, and every new account is confirmed within a few hours.
Trading Platform
OANDA offers three trading platforms, which are MetaTrader 4, WebTerminal MT4, and MetaTrader 5. MetaTrader 4 is considered to be the best trading platform for beginners since it is very intuitive and supports many indicators. MT 5 is also a good option, but it is more suitable for experienced traders.
Education
Oanda’s educational content is one of its strong points, which makes it a very good Forex broker for beginners. Apart from having regular articles that explain trading terminology and share tips and advice, Oanda also allows beginner traders to improve their trading skills through free live webinars.
During those webinars, beginners can learn from professional traders how to do the market analysis themselves. There is also an online library of recorded webinars that can be watched for free.
Customer support
Oanda also has decent customer support available. Whenever its users need help, they can receive assistance by talking to a representative through email, phone, or a virtual assistant. However, it might take a few days to receive an answer in some cases. For simple questions, there is a FAQs section on Oanda’s website that covers most things users might need help with.
Conclusion - Oanda pros and cons for beginners
Finally, we consider that Oanda is a good Forex broker for beginners since it has low trading fees, an exceptional educational platform and uses popular and intuitive trading platforms.
However, it also has certain cons, such as the lack of a cent account, its inactivity fee, and the delayed customer support. Although it is a good broker for beginners, it is not a perfect one either. Beginner traders who are still thinking if Oanda is the best Forex broker for them should feel free to read our rating of the ten best forex brokers for beginners in 2023 to discover a few alternatives.
FAQ
Is Oanda safe?
Oanda is regulated by six tier-1 (high trust) regulators, zero tier-2 regulators, and one tier-3 regulator.
Does Oanda have a mobile trading app?
Yes, Oanda has a mobile app available for both IOS and Android devices.
What instruments can be traded with Oanda?
Although Oanda is a great Forex broker, it also allows its users to trade stocks, metals, crypto, CFDs, indexes, and options.
What leverage does Oanda have?
Oanda lets its users trade with a leverage of up to 1:50, which is considered to be small. Although trading with large leverage can increase profits, it is a risky option because it also amplifies the losses if the trade goes wrong. So, a 1:50 leverage is ideal for most beginner Forex traders.
Team that worked on the article
Mikhail Vnuchkov joined Traders Union as an author in 2020. He began his professional career as a journalist-observer at a small online financial publication, where he covered global economic events and discussed their impact on the segment of financial investment, including investor income. With five years of experience in finance, Mikhail joined Traders Union team, where he is in charge of forming the pool of latest news for traders, who trade stocks, cryptocurrencies, Forex instruments and fixed income.
The area of responsibility of Mikhail includes covering the news of currency and stock markets, fact checking, updating and editing the content published on the Traders Union website. He successfully analyzes complex financial issues and explains their meaning in simple and understandable language for ordinary people. Mikhail generates content that provides full contact with the readers.
Mikhail’s motto: Learn something new and share your experience – never stop!
Olga Shendetskaya has been a part of the Traders Union team as an author, editor and proofreader since 2017. Since 2020, Shendetskaya has been the assistant chief editor of the website of Traders Union, an international association of traders. She has over 10 years of experience of working with economic and financial texts. In the period of 2017-2020, Olga has worked as a journalist and editor of laftNews news agency, economic and financial news sections. At the moment, Olga is a part of the team of top industry experts involved in creation of educational articles in finance and investment, overseeing their writing and publication on the Traders Union website.
Olga has extensive experience in writing and editing articles about the specifics of working in the Forex market, cryptocurrency market, stock exchanges and also in the segment of financial investment in general. This level of expertise allows Olga to create unique and comprehensive articles, describing complex investment mechanisms in a simple and accessible way for traders of any level.
Olga’s motto: Do well and you’ll be well!