OANDA Corporation, a leading provider of online trading services, is obviously considering quality of market data seriously. This is shown by the improvements introduced in the latest release of the company’s proprietary trading platform fxTrade (Version 1.14.30).
The new update comes along with a solution for all traders who have experienced problems related to marked data during weekends, holidays and periods of low activity. Putting it simply, this is the issue of empty candles.
Several years ago, OANDA introduced a set of options, dedicated to managing market data on weekends. These options can be found in the Chart tab in the User Preferences panel on the fxTrade platform. The options ‘Ignore Weekend & Closed Market Data’ and ‘Hide Weekend & Closed Market Data’ were aimed at clearing charts from empty candles during weekends. In addition, traders were allowed to set the time when a weekend begins and ends. So far, so good.
But time in Forex trading turned out to be a complex matter. For one thing, holidays tend to happen outside of the weekend too. Periods of low activity (in general) are not limited to weekends either. Furthermore, many traders were confused about setting the weekend limits and often excluded periods of actual trading activity from their charts.
To tackle the problem, OANDA’s product team redefined it – obviously, time (and holidays) were not the issue here. It was the appearance of empty candles and hiding active ones.
So, the latest version of fxTrade offers a simple solution: replacing the several options for ignoring weekend market data with only one, entitled “Hide Empty Candles”. When selected, this option ensures that all empty candles are hidden, including those outside of weekend or closed market hours (such as for holidays or unexpected slow periods).
The twitch is a welcome piece of news for traders who use technical analysis for longer periods of time – empty candles serve as external variables, skewing the data and preventing technical indicators from working properly.
Talking of technical analysis, we should also mention that the latest version of fxTrade comes with improved usability of Fibonacci Trendlines. Clients will be able to view labels of the Fibonacci level associated with each specific line when choosing ‘Show Trendline Info’.
The improvements are already available on fxTrade Practice and on fxTrade Preview. The difference between the two, as some of you may know, is that the Preview modification of the platform allows you to trade even without a demo account.
The changes are set to be implemented soon in the live version of fxTrade too, with OANDA’s representative saying the update for live account holders may happen this week.
To discuss the novelty with the OANDA Product Team, click here.
To download the latest version of fxTrade, click here.