US Forex broker Oanda was one of the only brokers to enable trading over the weekends. It is now adjusting its hours to most brokers and closes trading between Friday at 20:00 GMT until Sunday at 19:00 GMT.
The change begins on Friday, July 6th. This follows the rare step in which OANDA closed trading during the final hours of the Greek elections on Sunday June 17th. This is one of the first significant decisions made by the new CEO K Duker.
More details are available here:
NEW YORK, July 4, 2012 — OANDA Corporation will adjust its operating policy indefinitely to bring trading hours in line with industry standards. Beginning this Friday, July 6, 2012, the online market maker’s weekly trading session will close on Friday afternoons at 4:00 PM EDT and reopen Sunday afternoons at approximately 3:00 PM EDT.
OANDA was the sole forex provider to offer weekend trading, and did so as a client service despite the fact that global forex markets do not operate on Saturdays and Sundays. Regular weekday trading will not be impacted by this alteration to OANDA’s operating hours.
“Maintaining a market when the international currency markets are closed represents a significant challenge,” noted OANDA’s Chief Technology Officer, Tony Savor. “In the absence of live market data, OANDA could still offer a price for each currency pair, but with no active market in which to hedge customer trades, OANDA was forced to take on greater risk. To mitigate this risk, it was necessary to increase spreads but this was deemed to be at odds with OANDA’s objective of keeping client costs as low as possible. Our commitment to providing low spreads was a major consideration in this decision.”
“We understand that for some, this change in trading hours will be an inconvenience,” said OANDA CEO K Duker, “but when we compare the risk weekend trading represents with the very low volumes actually traded, the obvious conclusion is to suspend trading during non-market hours. This will also enable OANDA to concentrate additional resources on accommodating the needs of our clients during regular market hours, when the vast majority of our clients depend on OANDA to provide a fair and efficient market in which to trade.”