The Oanda Trade Leaders Program provides copy trading functionality within existing accounts
It is only a couple of months since Oanda acquired social trading service Currensee and the first results from the takeover are starting to appear. Over the weekend the Canadian forex brokerage Oanda Corporation introduced its new platform feature called OANDA Trade Leaders Program.
As you might be guessing by now this is the answer of the company to an increasingly popular niche within the forex industry called copy trading or social trading. The feature is powered by CurrenseeR Intelligent Trade Replication Technology. The trader is offered the opportunity to allocate funds for trading to carefully preselected Trade Leaders and have their trading decisions be mirrored on a the account.
All the leaders participating are going through a careful screening process and need to demonstrate at least 6 months of consistent performance in a live account and to adhere to their own predetermined leverage and drawdown limits. Oanda also states that trading leaders need to show history of disciplined trading, however it doesn’t specify how the company makes sure this is the case as achieving 6 months of consistent trading is hardly a milestone.
Due diligence and background checks of trade leaders are also conducted. Rumor has it that leaders are selected through a very rigorous and thorough process, so for now the Trade Leader platform offers a selection of 18 leaders. Their strategies range from fully automated to semi-automated and from scalping to technical trading.
It would be interesting to know whether some discretionary trading strategies are allowed to qualify for the leader board and what is the strategy in verifying their approach to the market.
Meanwhile Currensee is functioning normally and it seems that for now Oanda has no business in interfering with the already established community of several supported brokerages including LeapRate approved Ava FX, FXCM, FXDD, Saxobank MT4 and MIG.
For more information visit Oanda’s website.
For more on the global Forex industry see the LeapRate-Dow Jones Forex Industry Report.