Trade Ideas

Our trade triggered approximately 8:30 am EST this morning, but it looks like the pair has found resistance at 237.00. UK CPI reports came out better than expected, which appearantly did nothing to help our trade. Because price action isn’t what I was expecting…

Our trade triggered in the early US hours, and after weathering some whipsaw action, pt1 was hit! We closed the first half of our position and locked in +30 pips, then moved the stop on the second half of our trade to breakeven. The second half of our position…

Our trade was stopped out this morning by whipsaw action for -40 pips. In hindsight, I should have adjusted our stop to weather the event risk that was coming up. We would still be in play and in the money. It’s a revisited lesson that I’m sure we’ve all been through before. I still like a short play on this pair, especially after…

EURUSD spiked up this morning around 7:00 am EST, probably with the help of a surprise rate hike by the Bank of England to raise rates to 5.25% while ECB keeps rates at 3.50%. Our short trade was triggered at 1.3000 and pt1 was hit before Trichet’s commentary. There was a lot to go through his speech, but basically he said the ECB will…

We will close half of our position at .6870 to lock in +10 pips for half of our position. As we approach the end of the Euro trading session, price action continues to stall even after oil prices drop as oil inventories remain high. We will move our stop to…

Our trade was stopped out at 1.5350 on falling oil prices this morning. With oil diving this morning to 54 dollars a barrel, I’m looking for USD to rise in the wake of this. Oil traders will continue to watch weather reports for any cold snaps to drive up prices, so keep an eye out for that. Stay tuned for a possible trade idea on this morning events, but for now we took -45 pips loss if you jumped in at the same price I did.

It looks like loonie is getting a push as cold weather is forecasted in the near term in which we may see a demand in energy and oil – good for the oil correclated CAD. Also, the Yen rally seems to be stalled tonight as Japanese traders take off for the holiday. So, we got +70 pips from the first half and +00 pips from the second half… Not bad!!

Well, the market was expecting 100K (actually most were expecting much less after the ADP report came out at -40K), but the Non-Farm Payrolls report came out at a whopping 167K new jobs created in December! Crazy! This number blew everyone away and the dollar dropped almost 100 pips on EURUSD.

ISM Non-Manufacturing numbers came out with less than stellar number of 57.1 versus 58.9 in November. That number definitely shows growth in the month of December, but at a slower pace. The market’s reaction to the number was very “unspectacular”, so I have decided

It looks like dollar bullishness just continued at full steam as the greenback continued its rally and stopped out our trade. GBP/USD dropped almost all the way to 1.9400 before we finally saw a retracement of 50 pips. Also, we got no help as GBP PMI came out slightly better at 60.6. So, I was a little bit off in my timing in that I was looking for a retracement then dollar rally, but instead we got further dollar rally, then retracement…doh!

We saw a rebound today in ISM Manufacturing Index when it came in at a surprising 51.4 versus the consensus of 50.0, showing slight growth in December from November. Also, the ISM manufacturing prices paid came in at 47.5 versus the consensus of 54.0 – this reflects slower demand and a let-up in raw material pressures.

The second half of our trade stopped out at breakeven, so we gained +29 pips on the first half from our Euro session trade. We have ISM manufacturing coming out in the next ten minutes, and with the dollar rebounding during the Euro trading session on speculation of a stronger ISM number, I’m looking to go long to stay with the breakout and current short term dollar bullishness. I will wait for the ISM numbers to released and see if there are any viable short term setups.

With such strong positive US data today, I have decided to close the trade since the reports came out against my short dollar bias and the pair will probably continue to linger around 1.9600 price area for the rest of the day. The current market rate is approximately 1.9595 -You may close yours out at your descretion. This will be the last trade of the week as there are no significant reports lined up tomorrow….

Too bad we couldn’t finish the year out strong, but I am very hopefull for 2007….

Tomorrow morning we have a slew of economic reports coming out of the US – most notably the , , and the Chicago PMI (Big Pippin did a great job with a in his post today of all three reports). Basically, the forecasts are calling for strong numbers and we may see a continued end of year rally in the greenback.

We saw disappointing data from Canada this morning as retail sales came out at -0.7% versus the forecast number of -0.4% and GDP came in at 0.0% versus the forecast of 0.1%. So, we saw USD/CAD jump up 30 pips shortly after the report, stopping out the second half of our trade at 1.1515. So, for those of you who didn’t get to move your stop to breakeven after pt1 was hit – like me – we made +20 pips on the first half and -35 pips on the second for a total of -15 pips.

Well, it looks like this pair has continued to rise and avoided our short entry orders. Technically, the pair has risen outside of the channel and into the 61% Fib extension line at 92.70. Stochastics and RSI are still screaming overbought on the daily chart, but I added the MACD which is telling me we have a little more to go. Fundamentally, the Aussie dollar has been supported by strong fundamentals and a recent rise in commodities, especially oil and gold. The Bank of Japan has skipped the rate hike and left us with “moderate” growth rhetoric. So, I see this pair traveling another 100 pips at least before we see a reversal.

No pick for tonight. With the lack of any major news reports and as traders get ready for the holiday season, I don’t see any potential trading opportunites within the next few hours. We do have the Bank of England Meeting Minutes at 4:30 am EST, in which the market has predicted that it was a 9 – 0 vote to keep interest rates unchanged. This event does have market moving potential, as it may hint at future interest rate moves, but we will wait until after the report to see the markets reaction and if there are any potential trade opportunities. Until then stay tuned!

As expected, USD/CHF continued to drift lower and is now currently trading approximately at 1.2115. For those of you who stayed in the trade – good job! But, as we approach the Euro trading session, you may want to limit your risk by adjusting your stop loss, closing part of your position, or closing your trade all together.

Tonight’s Pick will be a continuation of yesterday’s short trade idea of USD/JPY after the US Current Account number was released. Again, we took off a small profit of 10 to 15 pips in the first half of our trade, move our stops to break even, and adjusted our pt1 to 117.70. We’ll see what happens after the BoJ interest rate decision and comments from BoJ Governor Fukui soon afterwards. So, we’ll keep our exit strategy the same and see what happens.

Update – 9:30 am EST

US CPI data has come and gone and we saw the dollar drop on flat CPI numbers. Unfortunately, it’s a little too late to jump in long at 1.2125 as i posted on my trade update. For those of you who did decide to buy at 1.2125, please set your target for 1.2180 which is coming up pretty quick at the current market price