Swing Trading on Gold and FX

6/13/2018 Session5 recap:
still hold the position.

Intraday take profit range: 1.1845 (Fibonacci 38.2% retracement)
Intraday stop loss range: 1.1770 (down block of symmetry chart)

6/14/2018 session3 plan:
will trade gold in this session after the GBP retail sales data.
yesterday's EUR/USD turns out to be a good position so will hold it for a longer term.

6/14/2018 session3 recap:
I meant to long Gold at 1305.2 level, but I deployed short hedge first at 1205.7.
The procedure is not quite right, and the outcome is of course a stop loss.

6/14/2018 session4 Plan:
get out 2/3 of EUR/USD before the ECB announcement.
and get back to EUR/USD after announcement.
I tend to keep long bias on EUR/USD. It is going up marginally above the trend line.

This kind of situation happened for many times.
Too lazy to write down a proper procedure when deploying the simultaneous long and short strategy.
Unfavorable things may happen if the order of deployment is reversed.

Will update the solution in Entry Rules of the first page.

6/14/2018 session4 recap:
another fail on Gold.

6/14/2018 session5:
EUR/USD fell dramatically, last drop like this was Oct 26, 2017.

6/18/2018 session3:
bot the dip at 1.1645 level.
Sep contract.

ECB president will probably change his rhetoric in Portugal forum this afternoon, as I believe the biggest drop (-1.9%) since Jun 24, 2016 Brexit
was not what they truly expected - their dovish announcement of QE ending schedule did not mean to make Euro down at all.
Just the timing was not right - Fed was too optimistic in the prior day, and the following U.S. retail sales data was too good - market did not expect that too.

buy the dip is brainless for most of times.
this time turns out to be a good trade.
next level is 1.1640 for EUR/USD spot.
will flat it today.

6/18/2018 session3 recap:
flat the position, will focus on session5 lately after U.S. opening.

6/18/2018 session5 Plan:
statistically less than 9% chance that EUR/USD will lay in 1.1689-1.1759 range at the close.


the easy way is to close below 1.1689 for Sep EUR/USD.
the hard way is that the ECB forum will boost it above 1.1759.
Or, it will just be another small probability (8.5%) event.

another small probability event happened in last trading session.
EUR/USD is quite resilient now, 1.1658 and 1.1695 are two crucial levels.

6/19/2018 recap:
EUR/USD clearly had downside pressure, however i managed to get two long trades after the big drop.
it made profit but moved slowly and it was not a good deal.
took me too much time on it.
why i took the long.

6/20/2018 Plan:
market sentiment is not supportive to Euro.
need to be patient to long.

EUR/USD chart is ugly, have no idea of the direction.
scalping for this situation is dangerous as the instant massive order flow will make a big slippage cost on stop loss order.

Euro updates:

Source: Reuters

Source: FT.com

market sentiment changed a little bit after British PM won the vote in parliament.

This lift Euro a little bit too. Patience before long or short.

6/20/2018 recap:
no trades. just watching quotes and reading news.

6/21/2018 session4 recap:
I should mark this day down for my future reference, as in most of this type of trading days i cannot make profit at all.
mainly because my algos are designated for ranged trading market (peaceful days), not suitable for trading new high / new low (volatile days).
I hope these new high / new lows days would not last for too long.
the below logs would be helpful for reducing floating loss next time with the similar situation.

after a day's watching without trade. looking for a rebound of Euro.
1) placed a high risk position on EUR/USD long, counter-trend, planed for holding without intraday stop, and prepared for a big loss.
2) as I saw the yield of US T bond started to drop, however U.S. dollar was making new high since last November.
3) latest news (paid services) was still reporting the new high of the 10 year T bond yield, thats a significant delay, or a deliberate behavior, that indicated a weak sign of the current trend.
4) timing is important, i do not get the right time to get in, my guess was that Euro will not make new low in the day, so i got in.
5) turns out it was too early to long, then a new low of the day, I did not stop loss because i did not know where to stop, and market sentiment already changed, no more bad news from news.
6) then the price started to recover, slowly.
7) then at 1900 eastern time, BOE chief economist calls for rate hike, a bad news for U.S. dollar, then a good news for Euro too.
8) at 2030 eastern time, U.S. Philly Fed Business Index dropped unexpectedly, I donot know what that is, but that data triggered the reversed market sentiment.
9) Euro went up.

lesson learnt in new high / new low days:
1) keep patient is very important, reverse point was very difficult to catch;
2) If a reverse was happening, usually they were running out of good / bad news,
3) then a reverse was lead by a sudden change of sentiment - a tiny piece of nonsense news / data may change the direction;

an alternative way - following the trend, buy the new high, sell the new low, but how to?
4) only if reverse happened, double up the position (counter trend position);
5) how to differentiate a real reverse from a fake rebound, define the "reverse";
6) need to work this out in the coming weeks;
7) maybe a modification of one of my current algorithm (acculmulaion) can solve this;
8) need to make procedures because this is totally out of my tool box, mainly in the aspect of news rules (alert filter?), and the price grid (sets), and the combination of hedges, and divergence from news and price (define it), and .....

the burst of ideas just disappeared, they all gone, thank god i have marked most of them down, both on my diary and here.
they are so fragile, only hard work can keep them alive.
I believe i just found a solution of a big defect of my trading system - cannot make money from this situation (new high / new low) from my track record.
this will be a very busy weekend.

to sum up, the whole week is tough, however i kept patient, refrained from meaningless trading.
i managed to make the profit, a big step for me.