Saturday, September 12, 2009

Oanda Robot Trading -- Cost Efficiently

If you are trading with Oanda, as I am, you are probably aware that you have to trade a fair amount before their monthly API fees are waived.

However, there is an alternative. The first time I tried their platform, probably shortly after it was released, I didn't find it very inviting. However, about a month ago I tried again. Guess what? While I might not use the platform for discretionary trading it seems like a good option for robot trading.

Which platform am I talking about? FxSpyder of course. While using FxSpyder with Oanda isn't free the cost is much less than Oanda's API fee.

FxSpyder connects to your Oanda account and can be used as a manual trading platform. While you won't find it exactly the same as what you are used to, that has no bearing on whether or not you'll be able to use it for robot trading.

Now, don't get all excited, robot trading doesn't seem to be the way to instant riches. Well, at least not with the robot that I've written and am trading with. At the moment my average return is about 0.5% per trading day -- this includes the partial trading days on Sunday and Friday.

Compared to traditional investments this represents a ridiculous rate of return. Assuming 20 trading days a month that would equate to 10% per month, compounded. I'm working on improving this but find that it's harder than it sounds. This is partially because my work and family duties keep me far busier than I am used to.

In short, I've got ideas but little time to implement them. Some day I hope I'll be able to transition to trading, or at least tweaking my robots, as my full time job. It would certainly give me back a lot of my time.

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