On October 10^th, OANDA launched fxTradeNOW, the first Google Chrome browser extension that allows users to trade live forex rates from any webpage without the need to navigate away from the page to launch the full fxTrade platform.

We’re always keen to implement innovative ideas to further enhance fxTrade, our online web trading platform. Initially, this browser extension concept started out as a widget plugin similar to the Facebook “Like” button as a way to put forex trading capability on the same page as the news. Thus if a trader is reading the news and they see something happen in the world that might impact the exchange rate between a curre ncy pair, they can quickly enter into a position without having to navigate to the fxTrade site, logging in to the full platform, and then executing that trade.

Once installed into the Chrome browser, fxTradeNOW gives users direct access to their OANDA trading accounts. We chose to develop fxTradeNOW for Google Chrome first as we could readily offer it in the Chrome Web Store as a free download. Moreover, we gained experience with the Google Chrome environment from developing the Forex Market Hours Chrome extension.

fxTradeNOW’s functionality includes real-time quotes, charting in four different timeframes, and the ability to enter take profit, stop loss, or trailing stop orders. It is anticipated that future releases will include the ability to modify and close trades, set trade defaults, and support for other browsers including Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, and the Apple Safari. We expect that these additions will be made available in the coming months. Thereafter, we’ll be investigating to see if this is something we can extend to our partners to embed on their own websites.

Experienced, professional traders may be seeking more sophisticated features. We are striving to address these as quickly as we can. However, for certain traders, fxTradeNOW is ideal as it’s essentially a “lite” version of our fxTrade platform they can use to keep up with this fast-moving market.

If you use the Google Chrome browser, have you installed and used the fxTradeNow extension yet? What are your thoughts on it and how would you like to see it evolve? Please share your thoughts with us in the comments box below.