Hello everyone! This is my first post and I wanted to check if anyone else is using Oanda and hopefully get some tips on setting up.

I recently contacted Oanda and was told that their MT4 platform does not accept hedged trades. I wanted to check and see how other members of the forum were doing using Oanda and see if anyone has any problems or success setting up Zorro through Oanda.

I am fairly new to MT4 but I have gone through the tutorial on how to create a trading program. Thanks to anyone who wants to give some input on the subject.

Hello Rambo,

a warm welcome to the Zorro forum! I'am trading FXCM and GlobalPrime so I can't help you here. But you only need to install the MT4 bridge files which you will find in the ZorroMT4.zip in the main folder where Zorro is installed. Follow the manual an install it to your MT4 instance. Restart MT4 and add the Zorro EA to a chart....

manual

Hi Rambo,
I believe Oanda should work with Zorro using the MT4 bridge.

If you are in the US, I believe for Oanda you should NOT set the NFA flag, and DO set Hedge=0 or Hedge=4

I do have an Oanda account but have not used it in awhile. If you have trouble getting yours to work I could hook up Zorro to mine and confirm its working.

Hello guys, thanks for the input.

I will see if I can get everything set up and running.

I am based in Canada which apparently doesn't restrict hedged trading even though the platform doesn't allow it. I was told by Oanda that I can set up sub accounts that will hold apposing positions as a way to compensate for the platform's limitations.

Dusktrader where are you located?

I'm in the US. I'm pretty sure Oanda wrote a custom interface between MT4 and their native platform (fxtrade). Since the US doesn't allow hedging, it could be that they don't allow it for any of their clients.

It took a few days to get the activation key but now I've added that to the software and at least that part is running.

I then followed the instructions in the manual and turned off the User Access Control. This turned out to have bad results because after I was prompted to restart the system MT4 had lost all it's settings and wasn't connected to my brokers account. In addition to this Zorro had reverted back to the demo version. Fortunately I was able to turn the User Access Control back on and reboot and the settings returned to the way they were before, in working condition with all my personal settings.

At a later date I will have to consider setting up a separate system for testing where I can turn off the UAC.

After some issues unzipping the price history data the testing appears to be mostly working.

You can leave UAC on when you're sure that you'll never edit or modify programs on your PC. But if you want to edit scripts or write strategies, definitely turn off UAC and leave it off. This is unrelated to Zorro, but also valid when you want to write EAs with MT4 or work with other platforms. The side effects of UAC can cause great confusion especially for people with not much PC experience.

I managed to pick up a used system that I can turn off the UAC and use it for strategy developement only. It has a dual core 2.3ghz and 2gig of ram. This isn't that great but it was cheap and should suffice for now. It has a freshly installed OS and almost no extra programs on it.

I have a somewhat related question and since I have this thread going I'll post it here instead of starting a new one. What are the suggested requirements for VPS service? If I understand this correctly Zorro needs one PC core per instance, is that right?

I have found a provider that can give VPS service for as low as $30 per year.

http://www.openvz.ca/openvz-vps-plans.php

Their cheapest plan comes with 5GB Disk space, 50GB monthly data transfer, 128MB ram, 10mbps port speed and 1 intel x3400 core.

Eventually I would like to run more than one instance. Would it be better to set up multiple Micro VPS accounts or try to get a more expensive plan with more cores available?