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Gav's trading blog - Perseverance, Consistency, Confidence

Trading Journal

Some quick updates and showing off

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This is going to take some time. I am still interested in staying at the short side of $EURUSD, $GBPUSD, $AUDUSD, $NZDUSD etc…Basically I expect Dollar to get a little stronger. However, I am sitting on my cash now to wait for the moment to pull the trigger. Patience is required here. Well, I might just miss out the big movement from here,if market chooses to start selling off right now.. let’s see.

Anyway, here is the snapshot of my workstation back in Melbourne, Australia.  I had been trading from my good old DELL laptop during my traveling time in Asia. It feels so great to be back. In addition, it is challenging but fun to have a 8-month-old boy at home while I am trading. Basically, I need to wake up in the early morning, around 5am (which is the closing time of U.S session)  to finish my study and trade preparation before the little man start to wreak havoc. 🙂

Trade well.

Chart of the moment: $NZDUSD 06 August 2010

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I am not trading today, but still watching the markets. During my morning chart reading, NZDUSD again pops up. I shorted it yesterday, and position was closed. Kiwi dollar was back to 73c during Thursday U.S session. And, again, 73 cents blocked it.

Here is the CHART. Do you see anything interesting?

Enjoy! I am going for my cup of Espresso now 🙂

Spot FX trading with Interactive Broker rethink

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OK, first of all ,this post is not meant to point out any fishy scam of retail FX broker like this one.  Price feed and trade execution of IB are mostly flawless, I have no complaint about that, at all.  Yes, the learning curve is steep in order to master the trading platform, TWS.  To be honest, I hated it at first, however, after spending time watching IB webinars, and playing with the platform, I found the platform to be pretty stable and reliable.

Now, back to spot FX trading with IB.  I found it to be a little bit troublesome, and, maybe, painful. IB charges commission for every trade. This is fine. The painful part of it is, if the underlying  currency of the traded currency pair is different from your account base currency, you will have to convert your P/L manually back to your account base currency. And, yes, the conversion is considered as a new trade, and commission is charged. For example, you have just traded USD.JPY, and your account base currency is AUD, then you will have to convert your P/L in JPY to AUD once the position is closed.

Try making a couple of trades in IB paper account, and have a look at your account balance, you will understand what I am trying to say.

Well, overall, the commission might still be considered as low, but the whole process is a hassle. I am not sure if there is any workaround for this issue that I might be missing out.  Shoot me a comment if you are an experienced spot FX trader with IB.

A broker with good reputation, financial strength, solid platform(provided you know how to use it), and easy access to any market in the world, I feel comfortable trading with IB, however, for spot FX trading, I am rethinking  now…..