2013-07-04 GBPAUD win but it doesn't feel like one !

Everything was horrible and confused in the land of currency strength.

But slowly things started to appear out of the fog, and eventually a trade appeared - GBPAUD. Looked good, no reason that I could see not to take it, so I did.

There followed the almost inevitable faffing about ...

Until it finally went the right way. Note that after the sudden large drop the stop didn't move down very much - the close price moved a lot which opened the ATR up so the stop ended up about where it started.It wasn't until after the NEXT candle which was much smaller and brought the ATR down again that the stop really moved.

But the price and the stop did keep moving down ...    Going once ...

Going twice ...

You son of a bitch !!!!!!

And stopped out for a gain of $6.41 (~0.12%).  Better than losing, but still a bastard. If I'd been in half a pip earlier it would been $50.

That wasn't the annoying bit though - THIS is the annoying bit.

After stopping me out the market carried on to easily make the profit target - it turned less than half a pip before my profit target, then turned again less than half a pip after stopping me out !!!

Some days you're the statue.

2013-05-23 AUDCHF win

What I wanted to buy was a no-brainer, but what to sell to pay for it ?

There was nothing obvious but the AUD looked innocuous and the CHF looked as though I could have sold a container of paperclips against it and still made money, so the AUD it was.  Here's a better look.

So in I plunged ...

The dashboard kept pushing the NZDCHF as a trade but it didn't look anything better than what I was in - everything was flat except the the CHF which was totally driving this trade, whatever was on the short side was just a passenger along for the ride.

There were the usual wobbles and hiccups but they affected the NZDCHF just as much as the AUDCHF

and eventually it spiked down and took me out and put $49.20 into the account Ka-ching !!  I'd been thinking up until then that the CHF tonight was one of things that James says is like fish in a barrel and it's hard NOT to make money on it, but this was actually the bottom of the run and it went up after this spike - anyone not using a target would have made money but not the full 1%.

So then I started looking for something else to work with. The NZD looked like maybe worth buying against the JPY (straight after selling it against the CHF lol), and note how the CHF has gone right back into the pack on T2.

Then I looked at the JPY over the session, it has been strong right from the start, it's only the degree that matters - so selling it just because it had been going down for 10 minutes might not have been the best idea ever ...

Then a GBPNZF trade got suggested as a P2 alert

I can see now where that one's coming from, the GBP has been going steadily down from the start of the session so looks like a tolerably good bet to sell, and the NZD had been going up for an hour or so and looked like a tolerably good buy - but at the time it looked like a sucker bet so I passed.  That was 2226 NZ time so 1326 Think time, looking back now it would have just gone BANG and been out in 15 minutes (while James would have been out for more or less breakeven after it turned). Bugger. Better sorry with money safe in the account than regretting a sucker trade I shouldn't have taken, but bugger.

2013-04-25 Hat Trick !

Since the Yen was rampaging I figured I could maybe use that, so I cast an eye over the strength charts again and saw this :

So I did. well, anyone would have. It's obvious !  Sell some AUD to pay for the JPY I actually wanted, or to make it simpler, sell the AUDJPY.

And away it went.

Oh how it went. All the way to half a pip away from putting $50 back in the bank. Then the swearing started.

And that was the end of $19.67.

One thing that has been getting more and more obvious throughout this trade was that the GBP was on a beautiful steady down slope - perfect for shorting. So I thought I'd have a quick check for news that might be about to happen then have a look at that. Mmmm, GBP GDP figures about to come out. So I waited. And when they did come out they were a lot more positive than expected, and that was the end of the weak GBP ...  Can you see from this when the news happened ? :-D

So I thought I might let things settle down a bit after a spike like that, because it shook everything up not just the GBP pairs - while the GBP pairs were directly affected, all the currencies that trade against the GBP have to be balanced out against each other too e.g. consider the GBPUSD and the EURGBP - the EURUSD pair will also be affected.

2013-04-25 #2 - Good entry, pity about the exit

This one was off to a much more promising start - I actually traded the pair I'd been eyeing up on the dashboard. Always a good plan ...

Yen pointing straight down, CHF pointing straight up, this one felt good and behaved the way it was supposed to, right up until it didn't.

Yen pointing straight up, CHF pointing straight down, goodbye $25.72.

2013-04-25 #1 - wtf was i thinking ...

Well, first trade for the night and all I can say is what the fuck was I thinking ...

I looked at the strength graphs and thought Oh yeah, the EURCAD looks like a go and so in I went.

The lines I had been looking at were actually the NZD and the GBP. I've got no idea where EURCAD came from but I know where it went - straight down the toilet to the tune of $31.52.

Nuff said ...

2013-04-04 #4 another accidental win !

Now it gets weird ...  I finished the last post by saying I'd be more careful about turning experts off on the platform when I didn't need them so I wouldn't accidentally make a fortune. I *swear* I turned EAs off before I even wrote that.

A couple of hours later I click back into the platform to check something for the blog post and what do I find? Experts are turned off, yes, but there's ANOTHER winning trade on the CHFJPY that I'm damn sure I didn't take because I was doing the blog post at the time it entered.

I'm not going to complain about the win, again, but I must say I turned the platform right off after finding it !

For the record it made 48.25 from 5115.84, which is a 0.94% win - a rather odd number. It was a [tp] exit not a stop loss, so that's what it was aiming for, very odd. Still it gives me a closing balance for the night of 5164.09 and an overall result for the night of -9.92 from 5174.01, which is a measly -0.19%.

I'm going to leave it in the results because no matter how it happened it did happen, and this is all about finding out what the trading is like in practice where strange things do happen, rather than nice tidy theory.

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.