Wednesday, June 21, 2006

Multiple trades on USDCHF using pivots and candlesticks

Today’s post displays a multiple trade on the USDCHF this week. As well as a nice trade on the EURUSD. First the USDCHF.
In the first screen capture, we see a shooting star at the top of a previous climb. Normally these are a no-brainer but, as it’s early in the week, our pivots aren’t yet accurately displaying support and resistance. We wait for confirmation of the fall/reversal. A series of spinning tops and other candlesticks indicating lack of clear direction tells us to hold our position. Another shooting star, and a subsequent bearish candlestick prompts our entry. Our trade is not as dramatic as we hoped and our TSL is triggered, but still giving us a nice profit.
The following day another shooting star appears. This one much stronger, and now our pivot points are giving us a little more help. A brief touch of a resistance line coupled with such a strong shooting star prompts me to enter a ‘sell’ order. The trade falls to the pivot and we exit as there is no clear break through.

Watching the pair retrace the fall upwards, we notice another reversal at the resistance (yellow line) – essentially another shooting star - and enter another sell order.

This time the fall is much more dramatic (52 pips) after a falter at the main pivot, our trade crashes through and heads down towards the next point of support – Blue line. Carrying on going, it finally starts to retrace at the yellow support – prompting us to close out.

This series of trades shows us the impoertance of following the currency pairs closely. After a while one can get a 'feel' for the action going on beneath the chart activity.

In another trade this week on the EURUSD we see a clear resistance after a sustained climb at our pivot point.

After a few heartstopping moments we see the trade dramatically fall in our favour.

This time instead of using my usual 15Pip TSL, I opt for a heavier margin of 25Pips TSL. This is eventually triggered - but not before we have bagged a nice bunch of pips.
With practice and daily chart analysis, this really can become second nature.
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  • Saturday, June 17, 2006

    A Volatile week comes to a close

    Very little trading done this week. Those of you following the markets this week will have noticed the charts varying wildly from one moment to the next. Each day seemed to bring ever more random and extreme variations in the currency pairs. Of course this was due to the multitude of news releases issued during the course of the week. As I have mentioned before, I don’t usually trade the news. I normally sit and wait out any volatility during the newsbreak until the markets are again giving me some clear indication of direction. But, this week the markets never seemed to settle. The result this week was that I didn’t trade a single day with the exception of Friday, when I traded a brief eur/usd bounce See pics below.

    There are people who do nothing but trade the news. If you are so inclined there is a course called MMTS forex trading system, which can help with timing trades during news releases. They have two main systems, one is the "London open system". They claim it is useable on any currency pair. As the name suggests it uses the news releases on the London session in conjuntion with mathematics to work out entry and exit strategies.

    Lets hope the coming week brings some clarity and stability.

    Here's the eur/usd trade.
    Noticed a possible support forming at our yellow line, seeing a bullish candle forming, I entered a buy order. (notice how the slippage puts my order much higher than normal) I enter an automatic take profit at the blue line above, which I guess is the next point of resistance.
    I get admittedly a little lucky and our trade touches our closeout price. But, I'll take it!

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  • Thursday, June 08, 2006

    The Emotional Side Of Trading

    Hi Everyone,

    I thought I would post concerning not, as you would expect, winning trades – but losing trades.

    I had entered two positions on USDJPY and GBPUSD my reasons for entry were pivots as usual. I expected the trades to proceed up and down accordingly - and they did. But, that particular day I had had a spectacular argument with my other half, and when I looked before retiring for the night I saw that the combined profit for the two trades was at roughly 48 pips - Great!
    However, being a little tired from the day’s aforementioned spat, I declined to put in place my usual 15 pip TSL and went to bed. On awakening I saw both trades had disappeared from my terminal! Which meant that they had both reversed and passed through my 30 pip stop-loss. Further investigation revealed that both trades had been mightily in profit before the reversal took place. I had in trading parlance "Turned my winners into losers."

    There is an important lesson to be learnt here. Whatever happens, stick to your rules. ALWAYS put your TSL or TP in place – in fact if possible don’t leave trades open through the night AT ALL! (But certainly not without the TSL)

    This illustrates what in my opinion is the main difficulty in trading the forex market. It is not that the technical analysis skills are hard to aquire (they are quite easy to grasp) It is the emotional side of trading that is the hardest to master. Trading, after a while, should become second nature. The signs are often clear, the direction obvious - and yet we still fail to act accordingly. We must control our emotions - not just our greed.

    On the bright side – I am back to my winning ways. Examples of two 20+ pip winners earlier in the week. See the trades below.

    As you can see from the image above, our pair had been testing a pivot resistance point. After three failed attempts to break through, I entered a sell order.

    Our trade dips nicely as predicted and we bag 20+ pips after a bearish candlestick prompts our closeout.

    Our GBPUSD pair looks as if it is reversing a short fall as a series of reversal candlesticks appear.

    A clear point of support is forming at the red pivot and we enter a short term buy. The trade progresses nicely but stalls aroung the next resistance (blue line) we close out again for 20+pips.

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