Trade Ideas

It’s December again, and you know what that means – time to rest up, eat some bunnies, and hit the clubs with my man Big Pippin! But before I go off for a lil’ R&R, I will leave you with a review of my trading over the past calendar year.

…long title but it describes my morning ForexAM show today perfectly. I outline the details of my two recent EUR/USD trades as well as how I use the yen (versus the dollar and euro) to discover whether the Dow or the U.S. Dollar is the market driver. And I also briefly discuss Directional Bias to show how I ruled out a 60-minute EUR/USD swing buy.

As promised, here’s my in-depth review of how my trading went this year, complete with statistics and personal thoughts. I put a lot of work on this, so I hope you like it!

DECIDE, my three C’s and my three R’s are still all tools I use to this day, some twenty years into my trading. DECIDE stands for Direction, Entry, Chart, Investigate, Deal, and Exits. The first step, Direction, includes something that I have been covering a great deal as of late which is Directional Bias.

Boo hoo! Just when I thought this Loonie trade could reel me in some nice pips before the end of the year, Canada’s GDP comes in worse than expected.

What a time for that trend line on GBP/USD to break down! Just when I had bought the pair in hopes of getting a piece of its uptrend, it decides to drop like a lead brick! Phooey!

It looks like a new low wasn’t meant to be! EUR/CAD has moved up higher, which pretty much invalidates my trade idea.

NOOOOO! Why, oh why, did I get burned from my HLHB mechanical system this week? To think I was feeling giddy when I saw that upward EMA crossover while the stochastic was still climbing!

Yipee! NZD/USD finally dropped and hit my profit target at .7420 yesterday. Thanks to good ole risk aversion, I was able to lock in a juicy 200-pip profit on this trade!

Here’s my daily Forex AM program where I discuss my daily trading outlook as well as some helpful lessons about the way I analyze the markets and set up my trades.

I discussed this point – the importance of using the daily chart’s “directional bias” – in my prior Chartology post but I wanted to share the real-world application in term of the price action we’ve seen the last two trading sessions.

Thank goodness I risked a smaller position size on this trade because it hit my stop. Oh well, I guess I could say I still haven’t gotten the hang of trading cross pairs just yet. Maybe I need to ask Cyclopip for help!

Dang it! Once again, my trade didn’t get triggered and price hit my desired profit target!

R.I.P. liquidity! While I did enter at a top, it seems like Cable has very little room to fall. What does this mean for my trade? You got it, I have to close early. Besides, there seems to a be a rising channel forming too.

The system works! Okay fine, I didn’t get a winning signal, but at least my filters saved me from getting caught in a false move three times this week!

A little background: The daily time frame was where I began my trading career back when I was predominantly a futures and stock trader. This was back in the early and mid-90’s when I know little to nothing about what the foreign exchange was. I have traded currencies but I was not trading spot until 1999-2000.

With euro regaining some of its bearing the past couple of days, and the yen on the losing end across the charts, EUR/JPY has climbed back up the charts! As a result, my trade got stopped out at breakeven!

The EUR/USD has been trending lower on both the daily (the most psychologically relevant time frame) and the 15, 30, and 60-minute intraday charts. This is setting up a swing short on a bounce to the 34EMA Wave on each time frame.

Eeeeep!!! It looks like the markets aren’t willing to go back to fundamentals anytime soon! My order got triggered and stopped out on the same day! The upside surprise on China’s manufacturing PMI sure threw a mean curve ball on risk sentiment.

Boo hoo, I can’t believe I missed my entry by three measly pips! Better luck next time, I guess.