Items Tagged With forex

Firstly, Happy New Year.  Remember that reasonable new year's resolutions promote success.

Secondly, the Wall Street Journal says the dollar usually posts modest gains in January regardless of events and data.   Will Dollar Get a Pop?  

Thirdly, I don't care what the WSJ says.  I'm sticking to my rules.  I went GBP/USD long this morning and started off 2007 with a 96 pip gain.

I think it is important psychologically to get off on the right foot.  Bad habits tend to propagate with me if I slip just once.

I tend to get a bit sad when any trader blog I follow goes dead for months on end.  I take this to usually mean that they have either given up trading or are taking an extended break from trading.  I've taken a break from trading before but I've usually tried to keep the posts flowing to some extent.  I'm not one to quit without a word though so you can be assured that if I ever do give up (don't count on it), I'll tell you.  

I noticed that Kitty's Forex Trading Journal has not been posted to since October 15th.  That's almost 2 months without a post.  Where are you Kitty from Australia?  http://forexkitty.blogspot.com/

UPDATE.  She is still trading based on her response below.

Yes I am still trading, not updating the blog due to lack of time and frankly, just can't be bothered. As of late, I haven't even been keeping a track of my trades in my excel spreadsheet. Pretty much just breakeven trading at the moment.

As I stated yesterday in my forex blog, it looked like the EUR/USD was nearing solid support and I was thinking about going long on the pair.  Since then, the EURO has rallied in the forex market about 40-50 pips.  I unfortunately did not make a move since I was waiting for the pair to at least hit the support line. 

I listened to Greenspan's speech on Bloomberg radio this morning and he spoke a lot about the ability of the economy to endure the .com bust of 2000, the September 11th attacks, and now the high energy costs. He states that the reasoning for this is that the US economy has a great deal of flexibility. I agree that the economy has been resilent but I can't see how it will remain so in the coming months. I'm waiting for corporations to pass the cost of energy on to the consumer. I think this is going to happen sooner than later. How else are corporations going to be able to increase their record earnings over the last couple of years? Personally, I have been able to endure higher energy costs...

I try not to talk too much about specific trades I make because I think it's pretty boring to read.  I've come to this conclusion reading other people talk about technical analysis.  But I try to give a shout out once or twice a week to let everyone know that I am trading which is what this update is about. 

This week I am trading very cautiously.  This wasn't necessarily my choice only, it was my systems choice as well.   The H-system has been out of the market all week and hasn't generated a signal since last Friday.  This doesn't mean that I go to sleep because I do still trade on discretion.  This week still has been very slow.  I profited 21 pips Monday on my newest system that is supposed to be in forward testing.  Today I profited 30 pips semi-trading the news this morning.  It was a bit of intuition but I had a pretty good indication that the GBP was going to decline which it did.  I'm just disappointed that my 1 lot trade was up 60 pips and I only wound up getting half that.  

The difference now with my discretionary trading is that I'm not looking at six other currency pairs and 5 different time frames each.  I am only looking at the shorter time frame GBP/USD charts.  That's it.  Like I've said before, if you are new to trading Forex, I would recommend concentrating on only one pair.

I'm currently up 129 pips this month in an attempt to end 4 straight months with a profit.  Whereas before I saw this as a virtually impossibility, I'm starting to think that it's totally possible and I almost expect it of myself.   We'll see how it goes though because I still realize how difficult trading is.   I'm certainly not overconfident which I think is a good thing because I think having overconfidence is a really bad thing.  

The greatest emotional problem facing traders

I want to take this opportunity to wish everyone a happy holidays.  It's been a productive year, one in which I hope my contributions have been helpful to you because yours have been to me.  

Now for a couple of announcements... 

• With the end of the year here, it may be advisable to reflect on all of our 2006 Forex trades.
• Forex Project postings and other types of information exchange are going to continue to be thin due to holiday "goings-on."
• I'll be around and I'll be trading with the goal of finishing up the year on a positive note.  The goal is to finish December in positive territory.  If I can do this, it will be four profitable months in a row.  Currently, I'm up 21 pips.
  
• I guess Rob Booker was making the rounds with all of his students this week.  I spoke to him via email yesterday and he warned me of "end of year volatility." 

An undersea earthquake affected the currency market today.  Reuters users in Asia were very much affected.  One Tokyo foreign exchange trader said: "There are many currencies in which market-making is being conducted via Reuters and such currencies such as the Australian dollar and the British pound are in a very tenuous situation now."

http://edition.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/asiapcf/12/27/internet.asia.reut/index.html

I just wanted to throw it out there one last time that you have until 11:59 p.m. EST this evening to enter the 2 week April trading contest.   Since making a call out yesterday, we've added 6 more participants for a total of 20.  Very good turnout.   Join now.  http://www.forexproject.com/Forex_Contests/

It has been a pretty uneventful trading week for me so far.  The lack of any major economic announcements this week will mean a lot more waiting during the US session. 

I have managed to squeeze out 11 pips so far on 3 trades but I remain on the sidelines with no longer term trades.  I've been looking at the charts the past couple of evenings but they seem totally foreign to me right now.  I cannot seem to make sense of anything and I'm not going to jump into anything until they do make sense.  

The poll from last week asked the question, "How many pips did you make or lose last week?"   It garnered 14 responses which showed that most of us did pretty well last week:

8 respondents were profitable, 5 unprofitable with 1 losing 100+ pips, and 1 respondent broke even. 

I've been trying to keep on top of economic announcements because they are at the core of the Rob Booker channel trading strategy.  I've created an Economic Announcement PDF with notes that were modified from material provided by Rob Booker.  

According to the calendar, we can expect volatility in the market on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday this week.  Before then, traders may be sitting on their hands waiting for Bernanke's announcement on Wednesday afternoon. 

 Forex Economic Calendar 08/05/2006,14:43 561.15 Kb