Euro

As usual I've been watching the Euro pretty consistently during the week. I am happy to see that my targets for Christmas time were about right, although on the higher end than what I expected. Either way, it would have been a good short term 1200 pips or so to enter short when the market started to look hopeful, especially given the state of the EZ right now. As for right now, I'm still working until at least the end of the year for this company and might possibly be there longer depending on how the beginning of the year goes for them (my guess is it's going to be pretty hectic around there). I'll continue watching the markets as always, and especially the Euro since we're finally getting back into the swing of trading although I'm aiming more for the beginning of the year as a time where the action will really start to pick up. There are just too many holidays around this time of year and too much spending of money instead of trading it.

Also, I've since noticed that the link to my trade manager on the right side of this page is no longer working as it was a MegaUpload link if I remember correctly. If you still wish to download this tool, I would invite you to simply click the link below it and scroll down until you see a download link contained in the forum post itself. Again, you can find all the info necessary to use the tool in this forum post as well.

For now, I'm going to keep working on building a bankroll and reading articles to really get moving on this. Good luck and green pips to everyone.

Still working

Well, as of right now, I'm still working on this archiving project for a local company. I'm still watching the markets in between days and keeping up with the news in general. The Euro has made plenty of great moves in the last few weeks along with the other currencies I watch, and I was pretty pleased to find out my predictions for the market a couple weeks ago were still spot on. For right now, I'm staying out and just watching since I'm typically up and headed to work around 6:30 AM CST every day and am there until around 4 PM. Everything about it is looking good, as right now I'm focusing on building the capital I need to start running my business. Although, getting out and shooting pool and talking mathematics (admittedly while a little inebriated) is cutting into that a bit.

As usual, good luck and green pips to everyone. 

The days ahead

Well, I've managed to get some temporary work around here and for the next few days I'll be spending most of my time doing that. Chances are, I'm going to run my analysis and place my trades early in the morning and let my monitor take care of them all while I'm at work. I'm hoping for a pretty good week coming up here. Looks like we had a gap down from last week's close on the fiber and now price is rangy and boring just like the Asian session normally is. I'll be watching the Swissy pair too this week as it's created a near triple top rejection around the 0.9230x area. Granted,the plunge back down was rejected soundly on a pin bar at 0.90825. Another test of this previous high might yield some upward movement, especially if the fears of the EU debt contagion start to drive the fiber into the ground. My charts have us in no-man's land for right now so I'm not planning on taking any trades. Given the continuous stream of news about how under the radar these huge problems in Europe are, I'm still favoring short. I'll probably be managing my four currencies as per usual during big moves. We'll see what happens.

Good luck and green pips to everyone.

Off for a couple days

I'm off for a couple of days from the markets. I went out this weekend and managed to find an antique firearm that I've been wanting for years. So as for tomorrow, I'll be out shooting some rounds through it. That is, if the cosmoline it was packed in lets me cycle all my ammo through it and my shoulder doesn't give in. I should be back in action on Wednesday to hopefully catch some good pips this week. Worst case, if I don't trade I should almost definitely be back next week in a good trading frame of mind.

Good luck and green pips to everyone.

11/14 - 11/18

So far, I'm not quite sure what to expect from this coming week in terms of trading. Last week, we had some good news out of the Eurozone and some ECB intervention on Italian bonds which managed to drive some rallies in markets, which the Euro followed. We did manage a rejection of the previous flag formation UTL around the end of trading (the last four hours of the session) with a tweezer top formation on the 1H. This is typically a bearish signal, but the price action around it certainly doesn't feel very bearish and there's no telling what sort of news will be out this weekend as Italy is working on forming a new government as Berlusconi steps down and there are apparently still rumors of the Greeks leaving the EU. Currently, the Swiss Franc is also "overvalued" against the Euro so if there are any large moves in that pair, they're typically associated with moves downward in the EUR/USD pair. I'll probably look at my charts tomorrow afternoon for some technical analysis but for right now it's time for some sleep.

End of the week

No trading today, slept in. Closed out my week at about +140 on a couple hours of actual trading. Waiting for next week, until then time to play some games and go to a gun show this weekend.

An interesting question

A forum member at Forex Factory put up a chart earlier showing a triangle consolidation on the EUR/USD that never broke out of consolidation and just kept chugging away in a tighter and tighter range outside of the triangle. He was wondering why this was the case, and I figured I had a decent answer. Probably the main reason (at least to me) is that when it comes to technical analysis, there's obviously no sure fire indicator/pattern that always succeeds 100% of the time. The likelihood of a certain outcome based on the formation itself is a function of a lot of factors in the market: news, volatility, volume, trader attitude, the signal itself. I can say for myself that there are some patterns and signals that I trust quite a bit more than others, and I'm sure plenty of other traders have similar rules. Anyway, my reasoning for this is below.

As a test of this idea, go and find a chart with a triangle formation, and then draw possible previous triangle formations. The obvious question to ask yourself is why did the consolidating pattern not break out of any of the previous patterns? The answer is, as I mentioned, that a pattern does not GUARANTEE a result, but rather indicates an increased probability of a particular result in the future. How extreme the consolidation becomes before any kind of significant move in price is a function of market action, news, volume, volatility etc.

As you can see on the first chart, there is a single triangle pattern, which is exactly how you might expect to draw it had you opened your chart at this moment. However, below, take a look at the triangles others would have drawn had they opened their charts an hour or so before or an hour before that even. Note that none of them display convincing breakouts of the consolidation and in fact, they only serve to consolidate price in an even tighter range still. Another point to keep in mind, is that the slope of the upper bounds on the price has not changed much in the recent past, while the lower bounds are decreasing continuously.