2013-04-04 #3 CHFJPY - lose plus an accidental win

This one did actually jump out at me from the page - T1, T2, P3 and even the chart were all yelling SELL ME !!. So I did.

Here it is without the other currencies in the way. Note how the T1 is already turning to custard.

And now, just under 4 minutes after the last shot, the T1 has flipped and it looks like I've got a perfect score for picking turning points tonight.

Then I went away looking for some new blogging software, and when I came back the trade was all over and out for a loss of $39.76 from 5104.82, which is 0.78%.

So I kept looking for blog software, and the luckiest thing happened. Sometime after that while I was clicking in and out of things I managed to inadvertently enter a long trade on this pair 3 minutes before some red Eurozone news came out - not something I would have chosen to do - but luckily there was a nice big push up and when I went back to the account next I found it had been in and out as a full winner - it would have been stopped out for a small profit if I hadn't been going for a target but as it was it made 50.78 on 5065.06 which is a tidy 1.00% exactly the way the winners are supposed to work.  I'm not going to say no to the win, but I'm going to try harder to remember to disable experts when I'm not in a trade !

2013-04-04 #2 AUDCHF - lose

I spent the next few minutes watching the T1 / T2 soup and eventually it split into 2 camps on the T1 of which the JPY and USD were looking good long, and the EUR was looking good short. Not sure if this shot really captures what I was seeing, they’d flattened out a bit from when i saw them and got all excited, but you get the idea. They’re also moving the right directions on the T2.

Here’s a shot without all the other currencies. The USD is looking a bit sad on the T1 now, it’s pretty much out of contention but I lined up an EURJPY chart and waited …

And absolutely nothing happened. A little while later the AUD and JPY were looking like possible longs, and the CHF like a good short, so I lined up the AUDCHF and the CHFJPY and waited. As luck would have it the AUDCHF triggered first so I bought that instead of shorting the CHFJPY.

A few candles later the currencies had flipped on the T1 and it was now the opposite of T2, and the trade was doing a pretty good impression of something about to fail. The CHFJPY trade was going sideways too at that point so that wouldn’t have been anything wonderful either.  The stop was trailed up reducing the risk and I got out for 38.82 out of 5143.64 which is 0.75% (a full loss would be around $51)

If I draw vertical lines on the chart at entry and exit,

and then change the chart to a CHFJPY, the entry candle is a doji (there are two together, the one with the red line is the entry candle) so the stop would have been the red dot of the first doji which is 23.4 pips, that makes the target 23.4 pips below the entry (call it the middle of the entry candle),

we see that one didn’t fly either but it would have been stopped out for a small profit rather than a loss.

2013-04-04 #1 EURJPY - lose

Cranked the platform up and straight away got this – so it wasn’t just an anomaly on the office computer.

Eventually London opened and the session strength chart started doing it’s prism thing, but T2 was still a big Yenny mess and I wasn’t going to touch it with a long pole.

Now there’s a surprise, when alerts did start to appear they all involved selling the Yen ! Who’d have thought …….

Eventually things started looking a bit more realistic, the Yen was still the obvious short currency and the Euro looked good so I lined the chart up then waiting for it to appear. When it did, as a P2 alert no less, in I went.

Almost immediately the two currencies flipped on the T1 and the pair rolled over …

… and died …  Luckily the stop had trailed up a little bit so that was only $30.37 gone – 0.58% instead of the full 1%

2013-04-03 Five in a row, four losses and one win

The first thing that caught my eye this evening was the JPY setting up to be bought.

The EUR or CHF would both have done to sell against it, but I got the EURJPY as it looked better on the T1 at the time I was pulling the trigger.

The GBPCAD started looking good after that, so it was the next acquisition

4 minutes later and things were looking pretty ugly.

and that was the end of the GBPCAD - lost 34.15 from 5208.00 = down 0.66%

To add insult to injury the EURJPY was now just pissing around.

To pass the time I entered a trade on the NZDCHF - have a look at T1 and T2 on the screenshot above this and you'll be able to see why, this was a minute or so later after I'd drawn some lines and arrows, and things weren't as sunny.

Twenty minutes after I said the EJ was pissing around it's still doing it, and the NZDCHF is looking nastily toppy.

That's the end of the EURJPY trade, and it only took 51 minutes. It felt longer. Final result was a loss of 8.08 from 5208.00 which works out to a live-to-fight-another-day down 0.15%

9 minutes later the NZDCHF trade is looking sick, but the EURJPY is looking like it might be worth another go at.

Out with the old, in with the new. NZDCHF trade exited for -21.87 from 5173.85 which works out to going down 0.42%, and the EURJPY has entered again.

2nd bite at the EJ out for a win after a mid trade wobble - made 52.35 from 5165.76 which works out to a nice 1.01% which is what we'd like every time !

Brave brave brave. Back into the EJ for a third bite. T1 and T2 looking fine, the chart looking tolerable, and even a P2 alert.

Pity it didn't work after a start like that ! Exited for a loss of 22.23 from 5196.24 which works out to going down 0.43% and that was the end of the night for me.

1-1 trades #17 – win - 14-3 - win rate 82%

The JPY was still shooting up so another bite at the pie seemed indicated – not with the AUD though as that had flattened. No, the one that had suddenly woken up was the EUR. In I went.


There’s that 3 big candles let’s have some profit thing again …  All the strength charts are looking nasty.



Because of the big candles the ADR stop was huge, this meant I could only take 7 micros instead of the usual 30 or so you get if you get in before the move. That’s very preferable, to get the same profit from 7 lots that you’d get from 35 it has to move 5 times as far so while I have the same risk I would have with more lots and a smaller stop, I’ve also got a small number of lots, a huge stop, and a huge target – 66 pips either side of the entry.
 

The profit taking was a bit more involved than I thought, and turned into a sideways move. The stop has trailled down now to about 20 pips – that’s a bit better than 66 !


Soon after that when the buy price was within a pip of the stop I grabbed another screenshot and started composing an analysis of the losing trade.  Session and T2 are now showing CONvergence not DIvergence, and the T3 is frankly confused about which way up it should be.



Then the Yen started going up and the EUR started going down and the T1 came back into line and we dodged the bullet by a hair’s breadth.



Then nothing happened, and enjoyed itself so much it happened again. And again. And again … 



Then we had another poke at getting stopped out but it was pale by comparison with the last try. 




Finally there was a decent down move, but because the ADR had shot up the dots were further away and stop actually stayed where it was.



Watching this damn thing was like watching paint dry, so to pass the time I practised sleeping, and when I woke up again I found this – after two and a quarter hours the trade was almost at the target and the stop was comfortably and profitably below the entry.




And … Gone.

1-1 trades #15 and #16 – win/win - 13-3 - win rate 81%

First thing to catch the eye tonight was the AUD, dropping nicely. There were a few possibles to pair it with, I was actually thinking CHF or something, but the alert that popped up was for the AUDUSD. So in I went.



10 minutes later and it’s going nicely – the stop has been trailed down to reduce the risk by about half and the AUD is still down and the USD still up on all 3 strength graphs. Also I finally learned to put the mouse on the last candle when doing screenshots so the time shows in the data window, and to capture the mouse pointer so you can see which candle the data window is talking about.



The JPY was roaring up shouting BUY ME BUY ME so I thought I’d add a yen pair to the mix. As the weakest currency the NZD was the obvious candidate for a second trade, but that had dived then started to flatten out while the AUD was still going down nice and steadily – with the Yen shooting up like petrol prices I could pair it with pretty much anything and make money but there’s no point making it hard, and going down nice and steady  sounded like a better bet than dived and starting to flatten. It was going to double my AUD exposure but the risk on the AUDUSD trade was down by well over half so the double exposure wouldn’t equal doubling the risk. Probably. The T1 was a bit of a mess but that whips around a lot so it was just a matter of setting the chart up and waiting for T1 divergence and maybe a P3 signal.
 


I think in the end it came up as a P2, and the T1 lines were all pointing the right different directions so in I went. Note how the first trade is pretty much at breakeven, so I’ve got two lots of AUD exposure but only 1 lot of AUD risk (unless the market gapped stupidly).



There was the usual reversal and things got pretty ugly on the T1 for a minute or so but from what I've seen there is ALWAYS profit taking after 3-4 big candles so I didn't panic (much)



and soon enough things started looking good again. In fact they looked so good that both trades went out on the 0835 candle. This was the 4th candle for the AUDUSD trade and the 2nd candle for the AUDJPY trade.