Trade Ideas

We’ve seen a huge USD sell off, US economy is slowing to a possible recession, and we have Non-Farm Payrolls expected tomorrow to report 125K new jobs were added. So, what’s a trader to do you ask? I say nothing. Everybody and their mama is waiting for this report, and once it’s released we’re going to see very, very dangerous trading conditions. If you are able to put in limit entry orders before the release or try to jump in at the market price after the report, you’ll probably experience slippage and get killed.

Traders are waiting for the NFP report on Friday to make a move, so very little action to speak of today. No trade triggered as the market never came anywhere near our support and resistance trades. With that said, let’s get ready for Non-Farm Payrolls!

We have one more trading day before the release of the Non-Farm Payrolls report on Friday, which means we will probably see more consolidation ahead of the report. We do have US economic reports starting at 8:30 am EST, but nothing significant enough to move the markets. The European Central Bank will be making an interest rate statement tomorrow at 7:45 am EST, and ECB Pres. Trichet will comment afterwards, but the markets are expecting no change.

Well, my contrarian ideas on the current market sentiment proved to be wrong this trading day, but I still think we will see a USD correction sometime soon. First, I had hoped for a market reaction to the ADP Non-Farm Payroll, but got none as the number was released close to expectations at 128K new jobs. ISM Manufacturing came in lower as expected, but the move was rather limited as the pair spiked up briefly before coming back to pre-news release levels. This tells me two things:

Okay, some of you may think I’m crazy, but I’m going to look for a short in GBP/USD. In the current US Dollar bearish environment, it’s probably wise to continue to short the Greenback, but GBP/USD has moved up almost 400 pips from the last retracement and it may be in overbought territory at the moment. We’ve seen US data show reasons why the US economy is slowing all last week, but I think traders are looking for some positive US data or any reason to close their Greenback shorts to take some profits.

At 8:30 am EST, we saw the US Dollar begin its sell off against the Loonie as Canada released their GDP at 0.3% – higher than expected. The Greenback steadily dropped all the way to the release of the US Consumer Confidence report at 10:00 am EST. The number came out worse than expected at 105.4 versus 108 expected. We saw a sharp move further down, and our short trade entry was triggered.

Good evening! Well, it’s last “Pick” of the month, so let’s make it a good one! We’ve got quite a few economic reports in the upcoming US trading session being released – most notably Canadian GDP and US Consumer Confidence at 8:30 am EST. The Loonie took a beating from the Greenback yesterday, but I see it as an opportunity to jump in the pair short and continue to ride the trend. The pair failed to break above the 1.1260 which was a previous high. I see the pair going down, especially after the Canadian GDP, in which the market is expecting better numbers as the Canadian economy’s growth accelerates. Also, the market is expecting a pretty good US Consumer Confidence number, but many may ignore that as US economic data has been weak as of late. So, I’m looking to go short on USD/CAD.

It was all about the GDP reports on Friday as we saw little movement before the report. As expected, GDP numbers came out lower and the US Dollar sold off quickly. Our long trade was triggered, and within an hour after entering the position we hit full profitability. What a great way to end the week!

We watched the Greenback take a beating all last week as US data has been showing that the US economy is not as strong as we all thought, and that further weakness is expected. We pretty much rode USD down the whole week, and with the exception of our Wednesday trade, hit profitability every day.

Apparently, the negative US economic news today wasn’t enough to strengthen the loonie against the US Dollar. With consumer price inflation dropping, we may be seeing a slowdown in growth for Canada. Is this a sign of what’s to come from the great run the Loonie has had against the Greenback? Only time will tell, …

Tomorrow morning at 4:30 am EST, we have the Bank of England Meeting Minutes being released. The housing sector in the UK looks to still be on a rise, in which will play heavily in to future rate decisions from the Bank of England. So, what will the language and tone sound like in tomorrow’s …

We saw the euro sell off across the board at the beginning of the Euro trading session, and the sell off only accelerated as the Eurozone CPI report came out as expected at 0.2% and the Trade Balance was reported at 1.5B, lower than expected. So, our short trade triggered and hit both profit targets …

Monday: -5 pips Tuesday: -40 pips Wednesday: No Trade Thursday: +80 pips Total: +35 pips Like last week, we started off slow, but managed to get a win or two and positive pips for the week. This upcoming week looks exciting as we have oil and gold prices currently declining, and major economic reports for …

What a boring day in USD/JPY!! While we saw some action in the majors, nothing too major about this pair as it stayed in a 40 pip range. It was pretty much expected with the major events coming up this weekend, but I thought it would at least continue to drift lower. Well, I am …

We have quite a few US economic reports rolling out tomorrow – most notably the US Consumer Price Index reports. I decided to avoid all of that because of the extreme volatility that is potentially created by that report. With inflation being one of the main themes in the US, I believe a lot of …

Well, it looks like Prime Minister Blair may have been misquoted when saying that employment data would come out slightly worse today – it unexpectedly came out better! Unemployment claims were actually down unexpectedly, show signs of strength in the economy. So, the short story is no short trade as expected, but our long trade …

Greetings fellow traders! Tonight’s pick is a simple one is that we’re just going to jump into a short-term, fundamental based trend in USD/JPY. The yen has been creeping higher in value due to speculation that the Chinese will loosen their firm grip on their currency, the yuan. So, with the Japanese Yen being the …

Well, the US trade balance grew to a whopping $68 billion…eh, who cares? Apparently, currency traders don’t! There was a little bit of whipsaw action that brought our short trade to inches from pt1…well, depending on your broker (my account never reached…grrr!)…and we were stopped out. But the good news is that the Greenback strengthened …

We have a battle going in this pair and it’s between the strength of the US Dollar caused by “inflation concerned”/”oil weakening”, versus the “inflation concerned” strength of the Pound. Now, the Greenback has been strengthening across the board this past week, but Cable kicked butt this morning as CPI and RPI came out higher …

It’s rare that we get to see Elliot wave theory played out so perfectly in the markets, so I had no choice but to make this pair my “Pick of the Day” when I saw it. As you can see on the chart, the US dollar has been making steady gains against the Swiss Franc. …