Has the latest event with CHF affected your outlook on forex?

Market has always been brutal and the market is always right. This incident did not change that reality. The only impact it had on me is the impression I have with brokers. Some seem to be better than others.

The conspiracy theorist in me also wonders what quantum of impact was associated with the high frequency bots to assist such a price move following the announcement. I would love to know who were the silent BIG winners of last week. There are sharks everywhere I tells ya and Guppy's like me don't like it. :-(

It is definately becoming a tougher game over the years with growing central bank intervention and the addiction being created for QE's. Who reallly knows what's coming aside from string pullers themselves?

It is becoming so fast and furious these days, the manual traders amongst us are becoming a dying breed. As I watched the usdchf fall, in the time it took for the saliver to drip from my mouth and hit the keyboard it was Game over Man!!!!!.......we are now dealing with a different alien breed. The central bankers mostly come at night for us down here in Aus. :-(

I'm with you there.

How can news like this stay inside the bank and not get leaked at all? If it is an "act of war", did they let their own banks in on the information prior to the act and allow them to adjust their positions accordingly? Did they tell their Allies? Did they tell the FED? Who knows, but you'd have to assume the SNB made a fortune out of it, as well as anyone else who they told prior.

haha - they mostly come at night ... mostly.

*sniggers*......I like the "let's build a fire and sing songs" comment! The kind of fruitless thing you do to make you think everythings gonna be alright!!!

While I admit it is very tempting, probably too tempting, to not trade when you have such information. Lets not forget that the SNB is sitting on a huge amount of EUR, USD, GBP and probably other currencies. So they're affected by the loss in value of these, too.

Until I have proof of the contrary, I'm willing to believe that the SNB had no other choice and/or simply underestimated the impact on the markets. We have to admit that a peg to a currency undergoing QE doesn't make much sense and maybe the ECB told the SNB a bit too late of their QE plans, I wouldn't be surprised. On top of that, I simply can't believe their doings are good for the swiss economy, so it is just logical to assume either a "no choice" and/or "underestimated impact" decision.

I'm sitting on my hands this week. We've Draghi's announcement re. QE, we've got reporting from FX brokerages in Cyprus due Tuesday, and there will be a string of companies, banks and hedge funds suffering very badly from this. Many will be shell shocked, so volumes may be very low, which means price swings can be erratic. The whole world needs to rebalance against this move. We have no idea how much equity got wiped out either, and we won't for some time. In this business I am, before anything else, a risk manager, and this week smells like trouble. Please be very careful if you chose to wade in.

Was anyone here on the right side of the CHF event and was short on USDCHF/EURCHF and made money? Seems like most people I come accross were on the wrong side.

Yes, I did!

Congrats Olarian!

jim cramer on cnbc:
"are individuals even supposed to be in this market?" - talking to the ib's ceo (peterffy).
so what was your question again? :-)

Yes I now don't think it wise to trade my own money anymore.

I was short the eurchf, and with good reason, but looking back what if I had made a mistake. That would have been a significant portion of my account wiped out.

Just don't know if it is worth it.

May I suggest trading earlier or pairs that are not affected by their central banks at that time? There is usually enough movement to make some profitable short term trades before most of the news come out. Works for me.

Anyway: see the bigger picture. Things like that will not happen too often.

Has the latest event with CHF affected my outlook on forex? The short answer is, no.....it has not.

The SNB has never played on a level playing field for as long as I've been involved with FX trading, and almost certainly for a long time before that. I forget the exact dates, but several years ago the EUR/USD was stuck in the 1.30's for an extended period, which was frustrating and caused me to not trade that cross until the impasse has been broken. Eventually it was broken and in due course it was revealed that it was the SNB that was causing this with their persistent interventions. I think from memory that the cost of that exercise was something like 30% of the Swiss GDP......and the market won in the end....as it will always do. From that day on, I decided to never trade any CHF cross as the playing field was just not a level one.

Of course we've seen QE from the FED and now the BOJ and soon perhaps the ECB, but to some degree we are kept up to speed on what they're doing. For instance we knew ahead of time that the FED was likely going to 'taper' the QE off until there was no further need for it. The SNB however, deliberately mislead and tell outright lies to the world, and then, as we have seen, recklessly pull the rug out from under everyone.....their own exporters and tourism industry included. And, again....the market wins.....as it always will do. I have heard some economists saying that this latest effort (the 'peg') will have cost something like 80% of GDP this time around.

The market is always right and it will always win!

For me personally, my exposure to the market is as limited as I can make it. I don't trade CHF crosses and I don't trade Yen crosses. Abe and Kuroda are way into uncharted territory with their "bold action" and the outcome is far, far from certain.....so I will not expose my account to the Yen.

Also, my trading is short term and trades are never left overnight, let alone over the weekend, and most of my trades are concluded within the hour....further limiting my exposure to the market forces.

Could I be caught out by some unforeseen event?.....yes of course I could.....such is the nature of the beast. But I have done all I reasonably can to limit my risks and exposure.

That said, I continue to chip away at the market, little by little...bit by bit....same as it ever was!

Are you still trading Genesis RJ?

No.

Genesis is (imo) best suited to M5 or M15 TF. I trade exclusively on the M1 TF for the past year.....

The thing I learned is a simple but quite lateral-advanced economic concept. If a currency is trading near a peg, market makers necessarily step out of the market through time. This is because of the mathematics of trading near a peg that may be broken. If the peg ever breaks the situation exponentially worsens in the aftermath.

A counter shock can happen later sequentially stabilizing price action, directionally counter. Or decreasing the rate of decline/increase.

It is that simple.

I think it just shows the importance of stops. I am a swing trader and I had two trades hit my stops and lose most of the profit I had gained (still ended up in the black). However, I live to trade another day thanks to risk management and using stops.

I don't know how you day traders/scaplers do it; I don't have the stomach for it. I like putting in my trade and (trying to) forgetting about it for a while. Props to ya'll who master those intraday charts

I lost all the balance and bit more, in other circumstances I would have funded the acc and continued to trade but this event set the limit. No more funding for trading. Money that has been earned in the real economy deserves a better environment.