Rufus

With news coming up maybe I should have sat on my hands. My entry was an hour before release. I thought it was enough time to get set up.

Rufus

Now that I am home from work I have taken a look at the trade I spoke of earlier. I had the right idea but the wrong place.

I entered a short where the elipse is. This was a bounce off the 38.2 fib of the previous days move and the Daily pivot. My stop was the blue line. I try to keep my stops around 25 pips max.

Obviously I got in the way of some big money moving around and of course I have no control on that. But if I had placed my stop above the 50 fib and above the pivot high right before Tokyo Open the position would have survived the bankers onslaught. The lesson I have learned here is to scope out with more detail the placement of my stop. My thinking with this stop was it was on the other side of the Daily pivot. I had gotten away from the habbit I have had to have as many areas of S/R to protect my stop. Reduce position size if necessary to keep my risk at 1%.

Well some thoughts from the day.

Many pips to you.

Rufus

I am going to layout here on FF my outlook for the 3 main currency pairs I trade. GU, EU, and UJ. I hope to be able to do this every weekend to help me out in my trading each week. This will be done with a 4h chart with some of the information gathered from the weekly.

I will start with the GU.

The long term and intermediate trends all are moving up so my bias will be longs in the coming week.

Price reversed on the 61.8 fib on Friday, to continue upward it has to break through both weekly and monthly pivots at 5450. Then the pivot highs at 5472 and 5522.

The UK parliamentary election is also coming up so this too may cause some interesting dynamics. Right now I am leaning toward grabing profits sooner on a larger portion to handle potential whipsaws. The election will be May 6.

The black fib lines are drawn from the most recent weekly pivot high to the recent low. Price reversed off the 23.6 fib and looks to be able to climb out of the hole alright.

So as it sits right now I am tending toward longs. My entries are always with the 1h trend and a cross of a pullback trendline. I will use fibs and pivots as targets and as a line of defence for my stoploss.

Rufus

Lost power while doing EU. Where I live there are a lot of trees and occasionaly a lot of wind. Today is one of those days. Tree must have taken out a line somewhere. Out of power for 2 hours. Shows the importance of having stops at all times. Also having the phone number of your broker handy in case you loose power or whatever to cancel out a trade. We all know what can happen in this market if you leave an open position for a few hours with no stops.

Do EU soon..

So I planted potatoes in the garden.

Rufus

Greece will be fixed soon..... Geithner is involved.

Rufus


The Treasury Department said Secretary Timothy Geithner met Saturday with Greek Finance Minister George Papaconstantinou; the head of the International Monetary Fund, Dominique Strauss Kahn, and a number of senior European Union officials to discuss the financial challenges Greece is facing.

The department says Geithner "encouraged them to move quickly to put in place a package of strong economic reforms and substanial concrete financial support."

Greece is hoping to obtain loans of about US$40 billion from European countries which, like Greece, use the euro as a common currency, and an additional US$13.4 billion from the IMF.


If you want an interesting read. "The Bank for International Settlements"

Rufus

This one I think will continue to be tricky. Still a lot of uncertainty with Euro land. My bias is long. I am antisipating the Euro and Pound to start moving together again. But like all else with this sort of thing time will give us the complete picture.

The EU is my favorite pair to trade.

Price stalled Friday at the weekly S1 and 38.2 fib. If it can get over this hump and close outside my trendline with the next candle also staying outside I will consider this in a confirmed uptrend. The next hurdle will be 3417.

With the elections coming up in the UK and the Euroland with its problems trading this week could be wild. Again I will be considering taking off a larger portion with the first target.

Rufus

Wont get to UJ. Headed out to work this morning. I am starting to like working on the weekends. Nobody else on the job site, no phone calls, and forex not going.

As for the UJ It is running into a lot of pivots and trendline resistance. As with other pairs PA will determine my entries. My bias is a questionable long, sounds convincing. My thinking here is that dollar index is starting to weaken, so it shoulld carry across to the Yen.

Next post should be from the side of a mountain.

Rufus

Just returned from work. Beautiful place up in the Olympic Mountains. Anyway too tired now to think about trading in 2 hours. Going to go to bed and get a good nights sleep work tomorrow take a nap then at midnight catch Londons open.

I am looking forward to the day I can reduce the number of hours I work because my trading is supporting my lifestyle.

Rufus

The 5m chart shows my entry with the elipse.
Entered on break of the trend line that was formed by the retracement. I wated for the retracement and confirmation after the big sell off with Frankfort opening.

Have 3 targets 5188, 5158, 5124.

If price can hit 30 pips will move stop to entry.

Rufus

First target reached. Moved stop to entry. Time for bed.

1:30 am here. Trimming another house tomorrow.

Rufus

I chose the Pound today as it seemed to be moving in a more orderly fashion. The Euro appeared to be a frantic mess on espresso. Also the pound was hitting fibs right on cue.

Rufus

The support that closed out the position. This one goes into the "win" catagory. It is just remarable at times to see this work. Price stoped just 20 pips past 161.8 fib also

Rufus

Paperwork due by end of the month so no trading for me today.

Will go for tomorrow night.

Rufus

Here is the car I want with the profits from my Forex trading.

Rufus

I took a long position at the ellipse. However something did not smell right when price kept bouncing off 5385. So closed it down before the bottom fell out of it. Baged 5 pips. Normaly I let my stops take it out, but it was just weird. So good call.

I have been thinking about starting my trading session a little before Frankfurt opening. Instead of LO. Lately there has been a lot of activity with Frankfurt. Are the German banks positioning themselves if Germany bails out Greece? From what I understand the German people don't want to bail out anyone. If Greece, what about Spain and Portugal? Or any of the many othetr countries in Euroland that are in dire straits? I fully understand the people not wanting to bail out anyone.

Now if I start with Frankfurt how do I handle the violent price action that has been accompaning London open? More than likely I will close out most of the position before LO and set the rest with a stop with S/R to try to protect it.

Just trying to think through my week coming up.

Rufus

This weekend I am working on being better prepared for the week ahead.
I have always believed that preperation is the mother of success. So anything I can do to get my head wraped around things will help. One thing I am careful of is to not get to much information rolling around with my brain cells to cause confusion. One of the problems I have run into in the pass is having to many indicators on my chart. I had thought I needed lines to cross or osccilators to move to put on a position.

Now I look at price action around key levels or trendlines. Fibs, trendlines, pivots, and S/R are my mainstay. Osccilators, moving averages, Bollinger Bands, all have thier place and are all trailing indicators. Fibonacci, trendlines, pivots, S/R are all leading indicators. I will still throw a stocastic on my chart once in a while but the way my brain works, if I leave it, I become fixated on the osccilator and forget price.

Another thing that preperation does for me is increase my confidence. If preperation is the mother of success then confidence would be its' daddy. Like the phrase I have heard "luck favors the prepared". I don't count on luck. I count on preperation and work.

So with all this I am updating my trading ledger/journal. Also a few other details.

Good weekend to all

Rufus

EU overview, 4h chart

Rufus

GU seems to be in a possible transition mode. This one will have to be watched. Elections are coming. So we could see some whipsawing depending on polls.

Rufus

My UJ preparation

Rufus

Well as much as I would love to do some trading tonight I am going to have to say no. Tired out.

Spent the day with my wife putting in a whiskey barrel fountain by the front door. When I get the water running in it I will post a picture.

What does this have to do with trading you may ask........?

If my wife is happy with things in and around our home trading is easyer for me. She supports me in what I do and all the study I put in. I need to do some nice things for her as well.

Don't forget Mothers Day is next week!!!!!!

Rufus