Why didn't my trade execute? OANDA Corporation

Below are the three most common reasons why your trade was not successful:

The most likely reason why your trade did not execute is because the applicable market price has not reached the price you specified. Depending on your chart settings, the chart you are viewing may not be showing the type of price applicable to your trade.

Many of the charts on our trading platform use the average price, meaning an average between the bid and ask prices, so they don’t take into consideration the spread. The spread is the difference between the actual buy and sell price of a financial product at any given time.

A long (buy) trade will open at the ask and close at the bid price. A short (sell) trade will open at the bid and close at the ask price. To verify the actual traded prices, you can add a bid or ask price overlay to the chart on our trading platform by clicking on Add Study at the lower left of the chart and selecting the Price Overlay. There you will be able to select either the high or low, bid or ask price overlay. This will show you the price that triggers a trade.

The MT4 platform only shows the bid price. To see the historical low/high, ask/bid, you will need to go to the OANDA trading platform and follow the steps mentioned above.

On your trade ticket (new order window), you can type in the size of the trade you wish to open in order to see the margin needed to open that trade. If you are placing a market order, our platform will tell you right away if you do not have sufficient margin (available funds) to place the trade. If you are trying to place an entry order, our platform will not stop you from placing the order if you do not have the current margin (available funds) necessary but the order will fail to execute if you have not increased the available funds on your account when the pre-specified entry price is reached.

The third reason your order likely did not trigger is because your take profit or stop loss was set too close to your order price. A valid take profit and stop loss must be placed farther away than the current spread on the financial instrument that you are trading. As spread is dynamic and can increase during news events or volatile market hours, we recommend your take profit and stop loss to always be set at a range farther away than the maximum spread for any instrument. Review our recent OANDA spreads to determine your take profit and stop loss levels. Be sure to click on Maximum, located on the top-right corner of the spread chart (please see below).


Read more about trading and orders.