I made 2 day trades yesterday. Long EURUSD, Short USDCHF. Simple setup. But, instead of waiting for the planned target, I chickened out on exit. Well…
Beautiful charts.
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Side note. If you are not reading this post on tradergav.com, please leave immediately. My posts are stolen by some sissy birds recently. They created a new website and published my work without my knowledge.
I have not been upgrading my trading hardware for a long time. I used to trade with my laptop and a old 15″ LCD monitor for the past few years. OK, I am a stingy asian man. 😆 . Anyway, I just got my Samsung SyncMaster 2253LW 22″ LCD monitor from ebay yesterday. Cool stuff. Now here is my new hardware setup.
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Here is one nice chart to show. Two day trades, 1 stopped, another with couple of Rs. Small positions, still playing around with new setups.
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I have been busy with my day job and struggling to have sometime in finalizing my trading system. That explains why posting has been lagging. Anyway, I hope I can get back on track soon.
In the August version of Currency Trader magazine, Ken Jakubzak was interviewed. There are a couple of points which I pretty much agree with him..
it was a major shift for the currencies.They dont trend like they did in the 1980s and early 1990s.Look at the overall trend of the Euro (Figure 2). It hit a bottom of roughly .8600 in 2001 and now it trades at 1.5600 (as of July 7). Thats a move of 60 handles (one handle = 100 points, or pips). But it took seven years to get there.
If you want to say thats a long-term trend, then good luck trading it. In December 2004, the Euro hit a high of 1.3660 and then dropped to 1.200 a year later. Thats a drop of 16 handles (1,600 points). Do you want to ride that down?
My point is that there are no long-term trends in the currencies anymore. They may go up 10 to 12 handles, but they will also drop almost as far. You can make some money using a trend-following approach in currencies, but youre not going to find big trades like you can in grains or crude. Also, 90 percent of all trades are losers. The other 10 percent should make your year and if they dont, then youre going to lose big. Its very difficult to trade that way.
Full article can be found here
THE Reserve Bank has partly blamed Australia’s private banks for creating conditions that risk pushing the nation into a “deeper and more persistent slowdown”.
The central bank’s board also seriously considered cutting interest rates when it met on August 5, according to minutes of the meeting released yesterday.
At the meeting, board members expressed concern that financial conditions in Australia were “clearly quite tight, and effectively getting tighter”.
The August meeting minutes confirm that board members were worried that conditions had been tightened too far, “given there had been a significant change in borrowing behaviour, confidence was weaker, asset prices had declined and slower overall growth was in prospect”.
The minutes also indicate that there was debate on whether to cut interest rates immediately.
The minutes signal that the Reserve board intends to start cutting rates next month. They say that without less restrictive conditions “the risk of a deeper and more persistent slowing in the economy would increase”.
Clear signal of rate cut? RBA had been working on slowing down Aussie economy in which they believed was the way to fight inflation. Now, the driver seems to be losing control of his vehicle…who to blame?
MORE than 100 local councils, charities, churches, hospitals and nursing homes across Australia are sitting on a $2 billion black hole after buying subprime investments structured by Wall Street banks during the bull market but which are now potentially worthless.
A document leaked to BusinessDay revealed that Lehman Brothers is managing tens of millions of dollars in funds for Victoria’s community, education and health sectors, much of it invested in high-risk financial instruments now potentially worthless.
……
BusinessDay has identified more than 150 government, private and charitable institutions that bought complex financial instruments such as collateralised debt obligations (CDOs). There have been few buyers for CDOs and similar structured finance products since the subprime meltdown this time last year that sent global financial markets into a tailspin.
The $2 billion in investments identified by BusinessDay pertains only to funds under Lehman Brothers management. Lehman acquired boutique local bank Grange Securities two years ago and Grange had been the biggest player in the CDO market, having undertaken a strategy of selling the product to local government, charity and semi-government agencies.
As Lehman was acting as “agent” to most of its council and charitable clients, it not only sold the products, it also managed them for clients, and in some cases “churned” the CDO portfolios by 200%, 300% and 500%.
In other words, the bank bought and sold the products between its clients and earned commissions on the sales, according to sources close to the councils.
Interesting game played by Lehman, but that’s not the point. Sorry, but pardon me, communities, charities invested in high-risk financial instruments? High-risk instrument, pardon me? Charities?
