Media Archives

Futures, February 1st, 2008.

OANDA's FXTrade trading platform is more than just a business, and has been from the day Richard Olsen and Michael Strumm launched it in 2001. "For Michael, it was a chance to prove that all the technical innovations he teaches are real and doable, and that you can build a trading platform of institutional quality on a retail budget." Olsen says. Stumm says: "For Richard, it's about saving the world."

(Full Story)

Euromoney, August 10th, 2007.

OANDA's Richard Olsen and Michael Stumm point to the reasons for the remarkably rapid rise of the retail foreign exchange market in their guest column, "Retail FX: the triumph of hope over experience."

(Full Story.)

Euromoney, March 19th, 2007. "Oanda has actually come up with something that looks genuinely innovative by adding five new currency pairs to its FXTrade platfrom. These are USD/CNY, USD/TWD, USD/UNR and EUR/TRY and EUR/TRY. Few banks offer these on a streaming basis and OANDA certainly looks to be the first in retail." ( Subscription required to read the Full Story.)

Euromoney, March 12th, 2007. "Richard Olsen, Oanda's joint chief executive, agrees that growth rates will remain high. "The idea of internet trading has not reached the man on the street. The potential for further client growth is huge."

( Subscription required to read the Full Story.)

Chicago Tribune, November 27, 2005. "People aren't quite sure on where things are going to go," said Michael Stumm, president of OANDA (www.oanda.com), which provides foreign-exchange services for travelers. "The dollar has gotten quite a bit stronger and has flattened off a bit." (Full Story.)

www.financial-spread-betting.com, September 21, 2005. Exclusive OANDA and FXBoxOption Interview by Andy Richardson, Financial-Spread-Betting.com

Michael Stumm: It has been very positive. BoxOption was released just recently. We were very surprised how many different clients bought BoxOptions. Clients just love the simplicity of the user interface. (Full Story.)

.. in search of Rule Breakers of the future., September 24, 2005. by Tim Beyers, The Motley Fool.

New York-based OANDA, which provides a technology platform for trading currency over the Web, has decided to tap the private equity market after nine years in operation. The company raised $17 million in its first round. OANDA told VentureWire that it has been profitable since 2001 and that it has grown by "a factor of three" over the last four years. Sounds like a Breaker in the budding to me.

Security Industry News, September 5, 2005. OANDA, which pioneered Web-based reporting of foreign currency rates ten years ago and launched its FXTrade e-trading platform in 2001, last month officially launched the BoxOption. It's a bit exotic, described as a cross between a binary option and a corridor option, but on the computer screen it is elegantly simple.

Barron's, August 1, 2005. OANDA's currency-conversion and localization services cover 164-plus currencies and are available in seven languages. Their mock-trading application is FXGame... and it credits the player with $100,000 in "play" U.S. dollars -- and it's free of charge.

E-ForexBrokers.com, July 26, 2005. While most brokers allow only the standard ($100,000) or mini ($10,000) lot size, OANDA gives traders the ability to trade any lot amount. Another attractive quality is that has its own user forum. In addition, OANDA has the capacity to have multi-denominated sub accounts other than in USD with no minimum deposit.

New York, June 25, 2004 - OANDA Introduces fractional pips or "pipettes" to narrow the trading spreads.

New York, March 29, 2001 - Launches Live FX Trading System.
Transaction Platform Offers Real-Time Trading, Decision Support Tools and Market Analysis to Retail Market.

New York, March 26, 2001 - E4X and OANDA Offer Risk-Free, Multi-Currency Payment Solution for International e-Commerce

- New York Times, December 20, 2000, Web Sites to Make the Trip Less Work ... [OANDA's] Currency Converter, lists current worldwide currency-exchange information and has a very user-friendly currency converter engine for international travelers. Full Story

- National Geographic Traveler: Nov/Dec 2000 Issue
OANDA Corporation, a spin-off of a Zurich-based econometrics firm, offers travelers a simple way to check exchange rates among 164 currencies. Users aren't limited to interbank rates of exchange that some sites display exclusively; they can also obtain the more useful cash or credit card rate of exchange. One great feature: wallet-size "cheat sheets" for exchange rates between any two currencies, which travelers can print out before a trip or download on Palm VII's and Web phones. Since 1991, an archive has stored exchange rates for nearly every currency listed on the site --perfect for the procrastinator who waits months before submitting the expense report paperwork.

New York, November 13, 2000 - OANDA introduces FXPense: an online expense report manager that allows international and domestic travelers to file multi-currency expense reports

- New York Times, August 27, 2000, Practical Traveler
CASH may be making a comeback. Two major companies say they have a brisk business delivering bundles of foreign currency to people who are preparing to travel overseas. In a study last year American Express discovered that people on the road in the United States carry an average of $500. Fat rolls of cash -- how quaint.
Full Story

- Online Foreign Exchange, August 21, 2000, The Economist
Richard Olsen, of Olsen & Associates, an economic-research firm based in Zurich, has bigger ambitions. Next month, OANDA.com, in which Olsen has a controlling stake, plans to launch FXchange, an electronic communications network. He says that, amazingly, it will offer retail investors trading spreads even thinner than in the professional market. Mr. Olsen sees the online FX market evolving as the equity markets have. Currency day-traders, he thinks, will become as common as equity day-traders are now.
... Read the entire article.

New York, August 7, 2000 - OANDA and Thomas Cook Global & Financial Services Partner to Offer Foreign Exchange Fulfillment Over the Internet

- New York Times, July 26, 2000, Business Travel
There's a conversational icebreaker for those interminable hours that you may be spending in airport lounges as this summer of endless flight delays grinds on: Did you know that 10 Bolivian bolivianos got you 3.4 Bulgarian levs at the money-changing counters yesterday? How about that Cyprus pound, one for $1.62. Or that Indonesian rupiah -- 9,100 for $1 today.

This sort of detailed foreign exchange information, which I guarantee will instantly trump any unwelcome lounge colloquies on the mind-numbing subject of someone else's frequent-flier miles, used to be somewhat inconvenient to obtain with any precision and convenience. But smart international business travelers have recently been discovering a Web site that offers current foreign exchange data in exhaustive detail. It's www.oanda.com, extensively revamped last spring by the Oanda Corporation, an Internet company that was spun off four years ago by Olsen & Associates, the Swiss econometrics firm.

Full Story...

Seattle, July 12, 2000 - CapitalStream Strikes Strategic Alliance with OANDA and brings online currency conversion rates to support CapitalStream subscribers’ multinational business

Pacific Grove, CA – June 27, 2000 - Altura International/CatalogCity.com sign OANDA to provide multi-currency component for its proprietary merchant operating system

- London Times, June 18, 2000, The Sunday Times Travel
(www.oanda.com)

How many Albanian leks will I get to a pound? And will there be anything worth buying when I get there? There are plenty of currency converters on the web but this site is worth visiting for its so-called "cheat sheets". Specify the two currencies involved, then print off a table of various permutations to slip into your wallet, saving you any amount of Carol Vorderman-type mental arithmetic in the craft shop.

- International Herald Tribune, June 15, 2000, Lee Dambert
Charging Overseas? Beware of Fees on Currency Exchanges "Recognizing the additional fee requires that the consumer know what the exchange rate was on the day the charge came through and then do the math. Steps most people don't take. You can find the official rate for dates in the past at www.oanda.com"

New York, June 8, 2000 - ORACLEMOBILE and OANDA launch first wireless currency conversion service

- Travel Section The Star Ledger , June 4, 2000, Don Groff, The Star Ledger, Newark, NJ
"...you can find the rate of exchange for pesos - or virtually any other currency - by going to the OANDA Web site..."

- Internet travel, May 21, 2000, Craig Stoltz The Washington Post as printed in Modesto Bee Sunday
Shakeout time for sites and users "If you're planning a foreign trip, Oanda's Currency Converter is an easy, painless way to check rates and make cheat sheets. Plus you can check foreign currencies according to the interbank rate (the wholesale rate that banks pay), the credit card exchange rate (which adds the 2 percent they charge you for the transaction) and the cash rate (4 percent above wholesale)."

New York, April 17, 2000 - OANDA Introduces New Website for Currency Conversion and Localization.

- World Trade, January 1999, "What the Euro Means to Your Business"

"One of the most popular, and certainly one of the most comprehensive, currency conversion sites on the web is aptly named The Currency Site, a service of OANDA, the Internet arm of Olsen & Associates (www.oanda.com). The site offers two-way conversions for 164 currencies and will include the Euro, with current and historical conversions for the other currencies from January 1, 1990, as well as currency forecasts. It also offers a "cheat sheet" for travelers, which automatically includes typical credit card (2%) and cash (4%) assessments or allows you to choose your own assessment. You can also access the converter at cnnfn.com/markets/currencies/."

- BusinessWeek, November 16, 1998, "A VIRTUAL CONCIERGE AT YOUR SERVICE" "Services such as Oanda, which offers data on 164 currencies and is published by market-forecast technology developer Olsen & Associates Co.'s Internet unit, makes gazing into bank windows to get exchange rates a thing of the past (oanda.com)."

- WebFinance,September 9, 1998

"...the Internet-focused offshoot of Olsen & Associates, a Swiss developer of forecasting technology for business and finance, doesn't process FX transactions. Instead, it provides sophisticated Web-based research and analysis. Examples include risk management tools, decision support systems and a daily updated conversion calculator that enables traders to view exchange rates among 164 different currencies. Oanda's difficult-to-duplicate, in-house knowledge base makes it a more attractive partner than a site focused on processing transactions - a capability that's easier to develop independently."

- The Wall Street Journal Europe, August 21-22, 1998, "EXCHANGE"

"Unless you're a financial wizard, calculating how much things cost on holiday in terms of your home currency is a tricky business.  take a look at a handy little service for travelers provided on this Swiss web-site called the Cheat Sheet.   The site also offers a number of subscription services aimed at those with a serious interest in exchange rates, including directional forecasts which cover point forecasts, indicating the expected value of a price at a specific time point in the future to a horizon of eight weeks, information on market volatility and currency ratings."

"...Exchange rates between an impressive total of 164 currencies, updated on an hourly basis, are available through a basic currency converter service, and there's also a historical exchange service which provides exchange highs, lows and daily averages over a given period. It's also possible for browsers to incorporate customized models of these facilities into their home sites, also for free if they're willing to have a couple of advertising banners attached.

- Globe and Mail, Toronto, August 4, 1998

"Every day, 80,000 people worldwide figure out currency conversions, such as switching their Icelandic Krona into Egyptian Pounds, by visiting http://www.oanda.com/convert/classic"

- Argus Extra, August 3, 1998

"...Olsen & Associates provide one of the best of the many free currency converters on the Web. The site provides exchange rates for 164 currencies, updated daily, with exchange between any two at the click of a mouse. It claims to be the only currency converter that can interclude percentage margins incurred when using credit cards abroad. Users can choose any margin from one percent to 10 percent. A useful feature when bookmarking the site is the ability to set personal preferences. Past exchange rates can be viewed back until 1 January 1990."

- Tagesanzeiger, June 13, 1998

"Eine Auswertung ... ergab, dass die Wochenprognosen seit Anfang 1998 beim US-Dollar zu 72%, bei der D-Mark zu 56% und beim Pfund zu 50% eintrafen. Die Kursvoraussagen stammen vom renommierten Zürcher Institut Olsen & Associates. 'Die Prognosen entstehen bei uns durch die Umwandlung von psychologischen und ökonomischen in mathematische Daten' erklärt Gründer Richard B. Olsen und fügt hinzu: 'Unsere Systeme werden laufend verfeinert.'"

- Wall Street Journal Europe,February 20, 1998

"...perhaps the site's largest advantage is that it provides rates for even the most obscure of currencies: Tongan Pa'anga, Haitian Gourde and of course, the ECU. When the Euro starts to be traded this site will also be an ideal way to get European rates. "
"...Once you have the Cheat Sheet for Travelers in your wallet the days of guessing just how much that 100,000 lira restaurant bill might be are over."