Live Trade Video – 23rd March 2010

I did a video as i traded the market live and gave my opinion and perspectives about all that i see on the charts.

If you like candlestick patterns, identifying a good trade setup and managing your positions, you definitely want to watch these videos.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Drop me comments on what you think;

Weekly Outlook – Mar 22nd-26th

Hi Again people, another week in March has passed and we have seen some volatile action last week. Either the ranges have become really small and/or the whipsaws have become really wide with the actual price movements being rather narrow.

I did mention that this will be exactly what will happen with the market behaviour at the beginning of this year if you would recall. In a stage of market uncertainty and dubious policy making, there is much to be convinced and lack of confidence within the market shows in the charts.

If you are  a conventional investor, buying stocks/commodities/bonds/unit trusts purely waiting for an appreciation in price value before an exit, this year might be a long haul for you. In the Forex market however, we quite literally don’t care if the market is to go up or down and we purely speculate on price action. As long as there is price action, there is a chance that we make profits. More volatility = more action = more potential trades = more potential profits.

Again, this is just my opinion. If it makes sense, don’t just sit on it. Take action and see what you can do? If it doesn’t make sense, well just stuff it aside for the moment but keep it at the back of your head so that you might get some reference points down the year.

What happened last week?

Ok, back to our weekly stuff, let us look at what has happened so far last week. As usual, we will compare the relative movement of all currencies against the USD. Here is how they performed last week;

1) Eur – -ve 1.77%

Outlook ; Bearish – Still no signs of trouble ending for Greece, PIIGS and Eurozone overall. No signs for optimism as yet.

2) Gbp – -ve 1.09%

Outlook ; Bearish : No positive signs here as well. We will look to Wednesday’s UK Budget announcement where chancellor Darling will announce plans for 2010 and beyond, with possible QE and assets purchasing options.

3) Jpy – +ve  0.23%

4) Chf – -ve 0.36%

5) Cad – +ve 0.06%

6) Aud – -ve 0.27%

7) Nzd – +ve 0.75%

8 ) Gold – +ve 0.39%

As you can tell from the overview, we have had a muted week in terms of actual price action apart from heavy selling of the Eur(no surprises there) and the Gbp(no surprises there as well).

Notice again that we have had little or no correction in the com-dollars and gold but they haven’t quite taken off as we had expected almost 2 weeks ago. We had a fake call with oil spiking but that move too soon subsided and Oil is well below the required 82.50 level and is hovering around the 80.50 mark as of now.

What is the USD Index showing us about USD?

On the USD front, we had some reversal candles and congestion patterns at the MA 50 level, but it has crept back up to be on positive strength. Though it hasn’t quite broken its highs of Feb 19th at 81.34, we are seeing neither strength nor weakness, in general.

We therefore don’t quite have any reasons to believe that the current trend we have will not continue into this week as well.

Fundamental News Events (All timings are with respect to SGT – GMT + 8 hrs)

Mon 11:3o pm – More speeches coming out of both Eurozone and UK

Tue 5:30 pm – UK CPI
10:00 pm – US Home Sales

Wed 5:45 am – NZ Current Account
5:00 pm – German IFO Biz Climate
8:30 pm – UK Budget
10:00 pm – US New Home Sales

Thu 5:45 am – NZ GDP
5:30 pm – UK Retail Sales
8:30 pm – US Unemployment Claims

As always, this is my outlook and is to be used as a guideline only. I will take trades against my outlook if i see conviction in the price action. I can also be trend following long term and counter trend short term. It all depends on what happens at that point in time. So be objective and trade what you see, not what you believe.

Happy Trading,
Seeni

KaiZen Update – 80% Profitable Accounts!

Howdy People,

Just as we get roaring into the 2nd quarter of the year, we hope it has been fabulous for you so far. It just seemed like a wink ago that we wished you Happy New Year for 2010, and already 3 months have flashed past us.

As always, we review our milestones and performances within our company every quarter and 1 key benchmark that measures our performance is, without doubt, the profitability of accounts using our system.

With specific attention, we review performance of our EA system and how our EA users’ accounts have performed over the last quarter.

The results are out and boy we are delighted! It reminds me of my exam days in school that we wait in bated breath for the results to be out. After having gone through many months of awareness campaigns, training and equipping the market with our systems, we are pleased that the trading community is beginning to accept our systems.

As most of you might already know, our trading systems are not your common, high probability, crazy returns based systems. It is an avant-garde approach to trading the market with a combination of strategies that picks its options against the market making profits consistently and mitigates risk during a market condition that is totally against your strategy. Its core focus is in its money management by taking feedback from the market constantly.

This approach sure had its skeptics. However, only time and results will tell the difference. The market now acknowledge our work and most importantly, they are making profits in the market, consistently, using our KaiZen Auto Trading systems.

Here is a snapshot of the statistics;

Overall statistics % of prof. accts 80.00% % of prof accts more than 10% returns p.a. 100% % of prof accts more than 40% returns p.a. 60% % of prof accts more than 60% returns p.a. 44% % of prof accts more than 100% returns p.a. 24% % of Accts with less than 10% drawdown 96.00%

Will You Trade Today Just Like Any Other Day? Think Again

I speak to many traders every single day and i have been exposed to many many people. I have been blessed with the opportunity to help many aspiring traders and also exposed to many veteran traders who help me in my trading as well. However, the beauty of trading is that it is very personal and more often than not, you will discover something from anyone with years of experience trading in the market that you could use. Of course, do your own due-diligence to see if it works(most importantly!) and if it suits your style. Otherwise, just slot it amongst your reference material collection library(respect intended).

One of the most common observation i have made off many traders, especially aspiring traders, is that they are really into technical trading. I mean, they analyze charts with a multitude of indicators and have all kinds of systems, layouts and monitoring working for them. Some even have the same systems  and complexities multiplied on multiple time frames, making them feel that they are in “control” and can nail the next move that happens.

Honestly, this is suicide. Trading must be simple and personal. I won’t go into a lecture on why indicators, what indicators and so on. Maybe we can have that for another discussion.

My point is, traders are absorbed into the world of technical trading that they think and believe is the ultimate observation perspective. There are many other events that happen on the fundamental front that cannot be translated onto technical/empirical data for you to observe and trade on.

Let me give you an example.

From Wed till today, we have various options expiring. This causes undercurrents in the FX trading scene as there will be large hordes of contracts which expire and change hands in the equity, cash, index based markets.

This will cause volatility. Simple as that. We cannot deny this nor can we avoid it if you would like to trade consistently.

So what happens? You will have lots of noise on your charts. Your trend trading systems will suffer. If you already have trend based positions open, hedge them or tolerate its drawdowns. Pick up a couple of scalping strategies based on short term movements and work with them meanwhile.

If you have short term scalping EAs to work with, this will be a good time to let them run ragged with the volatility in hand.

Honestly, not many people know this and i was chatting with another trader online that confirmed this. His excuse was that it only affects the options market, why do i have to be concerned since it is the currency market i am trading? ___________ Fill in the blanks please.

Always keep an open perspective and know the bearings of the currency market as it is one of the most sensitive.

And if you want to know these important dates as to when options expire and other settlement/clearance dates, refer to this document.

Zen Trading,
Seeni

Weekly Outlook – March 8th-12th

Great Monday again people!

As we get ready for a new week of trading, we are already seeing heavy weakness of Yen across the board. Within just a few hours of the market open today, we have seen Yen weakness causing USD, GBP and EUR to all strengthen against the japanese yen. Though it has retraced abit since its highs just a few hours ago, early market hours, especially on the week open can  often give you some good signals. There is an even a gap on Eur/Jpy given by my broker during market open which is rather unusual as of late, but something to notice perhaps? So, what could this mean for us? As in with the overall Yen weakness, since it is also the post NFP day, giving the asian markets time to react since NFP report came out on Friday?

Now, what i can rationalize is with 2 things;

1) There is strong USD accumulation with a better than expected(slight) report on NFP, where risk averse funds are heading from the JPY to the USD.

2) There are signs that the market is willing to take more risk with a better than expected(slight) report on NFP, where funds seeking more risk are heading to more riskier assets such as Aud, Nzd from BOTH the Jpy and the Usd.

The 2nd opinion has more of my vote, but it will be too early to tell but i will have this at the back of my mind as i look into trades today and possibly for the week.

What happened last week

Ok, let’s talk about what has happened last week and see what could be our possible theme/trend for this ongoing week. To do so, let us compare all our major currencies’ performance against the USD;

1) Eur – 0% – (No Movement!) – How often do you see that over a weekly data, right to the pip?
Once again, with market congestion, an overall range of about 300 pips but no actual price change.

2) Gbp – -ve 0.16%
Contrary to what I thought, the GBP hasn’t lost that much as the media claims that it has last week. With range of almost over 420 pips, the actual price change was only about 24 pips. Made some strong gains after midweek.

3) Jpy – -ve 1.63%

4) Chf – 0%
Obvious similarity to Eur with its strong correlation, actual price change was only 2 pips but the overall range was about 240 pips

5) Cad – +ve 2.38%

6) Aud – +ve 1.28%

7) Nzd – -ve 0.31%

8 ) Gold – 1.31%

For the 3rd week running, we are seeing gold and the Com-dollars rise in strength against the USD. 2 weeks ago, we saw a decline in strength and for data last week, we are seeing a disparity as CAD has done really well(mainly due to oil which we will come to later) though NZD has dropped in value.

What is happening with the USD?

Once again, let’s see if this week can be the week which will cause USD weakness, and how, if possible, if we can infer that from our USD Index charts.

On the daily front, we see similar sentiments as to what we have been observing for quite sometime now;

Things are looking slightly more conclusive on the weekly chart;

As we can tell, there is absolutely almost little or no range for a good 4 weeks and it is showing further signs of reversal with a doji right as of last week.

What is happening with Oil?

Oil, after a very long correction since its highs of almost $84.00 since Jan 11th, is now finally back up and showing strong sense of a price surge yet again. As of this point in writing when the screenshot was taken, oil is just about peeking above the highs of $82.00 formed since 21st Oct last year. If this level breaks, which i feel it will, our next test zone is at $84.00, range of about 200 pips.

Big News for this week – READ THIS!

I know that this is a long post and it is jam packed with information. I take hours to write this while trading and i want to give you timely up to date information, which is why my blog market analysis is widely read by many traders. Now, i want to make a statement for trading this week.

This might be the week we are waiting for; where i see USD weaken and oil rise in value, which will give us significant rally on our com-dollars and gold. With inflation, a so-so NFP report, rising oil prices and rising com-dollars(though mixed), the directions are all lining up nicely.

So, if we see oil break the $82.50 mark, buy all the com-dollar pairs as we discussed before (not based on USD) and perhaps start shorting some majors as well(lesser priority)

These are mid-long term trades, so don’t over leverage and expose yourself too much. Remember, i can always be wrong.

Fundamental News Events

This week, we have some so-so news events and some good news events affecting the NZD, CAD and CHF currencies. Due to the length of this post, i will cut this short here and write about my thoughts on the news events again in another post.

Happy Trading,
Seeni