Billion Dollar Day video analysis

So based on Richard Hill's conversation posted above we can note some interesting things.

First he changed his mind.

We saw before on earlier posts that he was apprehensive about Braclay's america been short sterling. In Richards own words "the whole world was long sterling" and he said he would get rid of the position as soon as he gets in the office.

Now after talking to Barclay's Hong Kong, he seem to have changed his mind, and he is now ready to " bash the pound " down.

Starting at 4:16 we can hear Richard saying:

I guess, we do feel some pride on the pound occasionally, but, is not part of our job ----primarily on there to make money so if the pound is falling
----take advantage of it.

So he is basically saying that his loyalties are flexible in regards to his own country's currency. But notice how he says that the "pound is falling" and not that the trend changed or that the "whole world turned short on sterling".

So we can conclude that his mind still did not changed long term on the direction of the move but he sees the pair temporary falling and he is ready to take advantage of it.

For me it is a lesson on how not to get married to your views. Looking back how much money I lost because I "knew" where the pair was going on the daily or weekly and trading it on the hourly. I feel ashamed I should know better.

The market can stay insane longer than you can stay solvent.

Institutional traders are willing to be flexible on their views according to a potential " market insanity". They adapt in order to take advantage of it.

4:53 min into the video, while a retro rock piece of questionable taste plays , we can see a quote on the Reuters pager.

1.2845-55

We can guess based on BBCs comments, that the time for this quote is a little before 6:30 AM

That will be important later as we try to reconstruct the whole price movement.

You are not doing tour homework boy!
The Asian trades does use a chart.
With this kind of attention to detail you will never succeed as a forex trader.
I should take the vouche I gave you back.

What?

Gosh! The guy is right William does have a chart. A paper chart between the monitors.

How did I miss that? After so many years watching this video

GOSH ! Another one on the top left corner!

More charts! How could I miss that! Unreal!

Another screen shot . I played with contrast on this one to better visualization.

So I guess my theory about William Wong trading "raw" price is officially busted!

:-) yes definitely an old school printed out chart! now if we find charts from the time you can work out what time frame it is on!

When he came in, I think the chart was already there on his desk.

For all you know, it might not even be a cable chart, even he was supposed to be the dealer "in charge" of trading the pound sterling. On a personal level, Chinese traders in Hong Kong also pay attention to the local stock market.

Regardless, does it even matter if he WAS "using" charts? I know interbank traders even from my generation who use naked charts as just a visual reference of where the S/Rs and/or the orders are. One of my grand seniors used a high school graph book to manually mark up point-and-figure charts.

It doesn't mean William WASN'T trading off solely from price. If I remember correctly, not once did William make any reference to chart points or technical levels. He just went by the skin of his balls.

It is different to each one here Skenobi, the way people will regard and use the new information Platypus brought in.

In my case I'm doing this study to improve more than to prove anything. But I found awesome that I can know for sure now that institutional traders back than used charts.

I can't remember how many times people wrote on threads that professionals just trade based on the "tape" and nothing more. I, myself was influenced by this idea. Now, at least for me this allegation is busted.

Institutional traders may do look at the tape but they have a old fashion chart right there to guide than.

Remember when I mention about William looking at his monitor all the time while discussing with BBCs interviewer. Well he was probably consulting the chart, not the tape.

Platypus thanks again! Good eye, if you have the same eye to spot trades you should be a very good trader !

Ok now that William Wong was cot "cheating" looking at charts we can move on

Around 5:30 min BBC gives some personal information about Richard Hill.

He is 31 years old, he started right at the bottom ( whatever the bottom is) at Barclay and he makes more money than a bank manager. Now that said we already saw that this guy works like a horse.

Apart from his less than 6 hours of sleep, his time appears to be dedicate exclusively to forex.

Honestly I believe the lack of information about him on the internet may be because he is already dead.

I was able to track down pretty much all traders in this documentary but him.

Working this way, smoking like a chimney and sitting for 10 hours straight I believe he is gone.

At around 6:30 AM he is already at Barclay's dealing room, we can see him walking though the almost empty room. The cleaning crew is still there when he arrives and I think he is always the first trader to show up.

The camera cuts to what should be 30 min later and Richard is checking something on the computers. Other traders are already at the trading workstation.

That concludes part B of the documentary

Ok, before we go to part C of the video, lets see what price data we have so far. Later this will be very important to reconstruct how price moved during 06-04-1985

8:00 AM Kong kong local time.

1.2835
1.2840 From William"s
1.2845 trading room
1.2850

-------------------------------------

1.2875-85 10:14 Rony's terminal
1.2867-77 10:15 time is NY PM
1.2870-80 10:14

-------------------------------------

1.2847-57 William's Reuters pager ( on his early lunch )

----------------------------------

1.2856-51
1.2857-62 William buying dollars
1.2858-51 to close his position
1.2855-65

--------------------------------------
1.2850-55 Final quote after positions squared.

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1.2845-55 Richard Hill Reuters pager

I'm very happy with the thread so far. I'm still learning and getting to new conclusions. Even after watching this video countless time I'm still learning and applying new knowledge to my trading strategy

Thanks for every one participating. New ideas and new point of views are crucial to the advance of knowledge.

Billion Dollar day part C

Ok so lets keep going on our study. We are half way into the documentary and now with the London session starting and at Barclay's trading room
he data will start to pour.

Ok, part C starts showing Barclay's tradingstation all traders already on their trading desk.

At 0:07 min, one of the traders is reading something about the pound "leading the way down", Richard Hill seems interested on the approach and asks who wrote it.

So we know that Richard Hill was not very confident about shorting sterling the night before. He even told Barclay america he would close their short positions as soon as he got to the office.

Than right before coming to work he told Barclay Hong Kong that he was ready to short sterling. So something between 11PM and 6AM made him change his mind.

Another option is that he told Barclay america that he would keep their short until right before Asia closes, and them get rid of it. This theory justify him saying " as soon as the far east gets going" and "but don't think you will make a fortune out of it" and also goes in line with him telling Barclay Hong Kong about about "try to bash it down" 60 points.

Now looking better this last option makes sense .

Barclay america opened a big position short sterling , pure sterling not only the cable, meaning they sold on all sterling pairs. Barclay asia took care of the position over night and now Richard will carry on through London.

So following this way of thinking he did not change his mind at all but is just cautious because they are counter trend trading.

0:41 into the video BBC comment about Barclay making over 100M on forex speculation in 1984.

The camera cuts to the clock on the wall it is 8:32 AM in London. It is 1:30 PM where William is.

Than the camera cut to Richard.

At the start of the day all banks in the world are ----- to the same information. The question is will you make the best use of the information ----

I missed some words in this transcript but the point he is trying to make is that the institutions that better interpret the fundamentals are the ones that will make money.

So basically we saw Richard interested on financial comments and now talking about the importance of fundamentals ( news etc) so we can conclude that bank traders do take fundamentals in consideration and don't trade only based on the tape and or static charts.

Next thing we see at 1:02 minutes is Barclay's positions screen.

Based on the pic below we can see that they are 74 million and change short.

There is market positions, short date projection , forward projection etc

There is a break down of the positions and i think I can see something like "sterling" written there.

Hey guys.

Thats for everybody following the thread.

I managed to book a interview with William Wong !

If you have any questions you want to ask post it here and I will take the best ones. I can't ask the guy a million questions so I will take the very best ones and add to my own to try and make the best of this opportunity.

amazing..... cant wait for the next part and all the questions and answers for william