Check out this long tail wick and resistance from hammer

so that long tail doji signalled the sell
also the candle after wsa a bearish engulfing
and it could be seen as an evening star
so we had 3 bear signals there
With the tail of the doji being the resistance.

Risk aversion still the play of the day.

>

JPY and USD rallies after lunch break. Risk aversion still the play of the day.

ES Bounced off the Pivot but ...

Bounced of the Pivot but it's been failing the 200ema so we I'll wait for further confirmation to take a long position. Because of time of day there is no need to rush the trade. It's lunch time or shortly after so we have time to wait for further development

BP chart. BP had couple nice setups for going both long and short. I have a short position which I am playing around.

It opened gap down then would retrace at least 50%.  Today it retraced more than the days gap but also previous day's gap.  Went all the way up to R3 where it reversed.  Today's chart showed where the 50 period Moving average was support on the way up and once price crossed over it became resistance as the price moved down.

DOW still Up. EURUSD sold off but news not all that bad. I don't see regime change as being bad...

Heck we have big bull market rally under Obama.  Who would have though.

Going to take the chance and go long $AUDUSD here @ 0.9058 after a bounce off the 38.2 retracement level hoping that or the wkly piv S2 will hold.  If not there then the 23.6 retracement.  Still using the fibs from yesterday, May 5th big move.

As I am typing this we AUDUSD have moved below weekly S2.  $DOW moved down to -1.  Will be reconsidering bias.

Failed to close candle on 15 min chart above the 61.8% retrace.

I believe it's more of a short term pullback. Slight pullback in $DOW futures, a pause in the $EURUSD at the weekly piv S3 and 23.6% fib retracement level also.   My new scared cat trading prod me to sell though.  My new account balance doesn't allow me to be brave trader.  Thinking of re-entering on dip to some sort of support level or it may just have to leave me.

If an increase in month to month growth cannot be spun as good then the people who has been ....

$AUDUSD Either the numbers being digest still or not bad relevant to stop the rally. $DOW fut. still up. $EURUSD not falling. The SPIN

If an increase in month to month growth cannot be spun as good then the people who has been spinning the rally all year must have been fired and taken away from the being near internet or media. 

Australian retail sales growth for Mach grew 0.3% as opposed to analyst estimate of 0.5%. 
Let me begin the SPIN
Considering present conditions, any growth is good growth.

So now we had that pull back from the 50% retracement back to the zero %, previous support

Usually if we were in any kind of positive market for the US if would have been an easy decision to go long.  Now it's questionable as we start wondering if folks are willing to take the risk and put the money in EUR or USD. 


Chart says play double bottom bounce. US market down is that a good move?

Is this bearish for the moment. The trend for the US market seems to be up,

Could this area be an area for tecnical retracement ?

EURUSD (EUR/USD) Cautiously bearish.

Something that bugged me about last weeks run up in the EURUSD was the fact that we all knew that even this weekend's agreement is not a real agreement because while German prime minister says she will put her full support behind it, it will be a challenge as she takes it back to her parliment to be voted on. She will be doing this on Friday. I guess instead of it having the big gap like last time when the first EU and IMF agreement was made on the Sunday; they ran it up last week and today should have a smaller gap.

If history repeats itself then we should have a selloff as the agreement is just like the previous agreement. Germany is still not in. The prime minister has to take it back to parliment and have it voted on and then there are a bunch of German professors threatening to file law suite if it goes through.

So there is still uncertainty about the whole deal that should prevent the EURUSD from rallying a whole lot and a selloff of any rally.

So depending on how her presentation to parliment seems we will know if it's a big rally or big sell off.

I was asked by a member of another board where I sometimes post "K__ how you doing so far with the trading?"

I didn't end the week well. My bad habbits crept back in and had the better of me. I went short EURUSD as a quick trade. Was profitable net 25 pips. Had a tgt close and take profit @ 30 pips. It reversed at 25 pips. I had 3 Short USDEUR positions and 1 EURGBP to hedge. Generally this trade works but on Thursday the GBP rallied harder than the EUR. I got a GBPUSD as additional hedge but cut eventually when it was moving too slow upwards. What I should have cut was the EURGBP but it had a huge loss at the time and for some reason I had a problem cutting losers thursday.

Friday during the European session open the EURUSD continued to rally. I was down net 400+ pips and pretty much overleveraged. I lost the 86% growth to the account I had accumilated since April 1st. I decided to close all postions and reversed to the long side as I should have done Thursday. I did then it moved against me. I closed for 2 pip loss. I reversed back to the short side and closed for a 17 pip loss on 2 positions.

I decided at that point to rethink my strategy because I knew better and my analysis was right but I just was not trading with my analysis. I was looking at the trend seeing that it was up but yet remained short hoping instead of trading what I say. I was clearly sabotaging my wealth. I knew that's what I was doing but remained paralyzed in stopping. It was totally an emotional thing. The bad thing is during the trades that I lost money on they were net successful between 10 - 25 pips at some point but something kept prevented me from taking the profit.

I took a break went to sleep got up and made a couple small trades and net 30 pips.

So while analysis can be very important, it is more important to have proper trade and account management. Make a set of rules and stick to them. Don't change a short term strategy to long term mid trade without making sure you've done the account risk management analysis first. Should be done before the trade is put on. That way I have a plan to cut back on the position size to make sure I am able to withstand the potential drawdown.

Still learning little nuances of the Forex Market. Assian session, European session, US session ...

Exerpts from my post chat session today
2:58 PM [ki] today I was down at least 60 pips in 5 positions at about the same time coming into the US session at about 5am to 6 am. I was basicall short the USD in most of my position except for one where I was short EURGBP.
2:59 PM [ki] Positions Long against USD were: L EURUSD, AUDUSD, GBPUSD. Was playing the gap.
3:04 PM [ki] When the US market opened the account recovered to break even and at 11:30 - 12:30 I was profitable by 30% of daily target. However I didn't take profit and watched it go neagative again where I was down in the account by 10% which is almost 50% of tgt
3:05 PM [ki] Currently I am up again by 30% of daily target. Waiting for position to develop as planned when I entered it last night. It's not easy waiting for position to develop under these circumstance
3:07 PM [ki] Especially after sitting through a drawdown of more than 30% of your account.
4:47 PM [ki] Need emotional break for a bit. Had 5 pos running since yest. eve. Closed my Short $EURGBP position for +27 pips profit, Closed my Long GBPUSD position for +75 pips profit. Currently have 3 positions still opened: 2 Long EURUSD and 1 Long AUDUSD.

My riding these big draw down lately has helped me to realize what some of these great traders go through while they wait for their positions to develop. Especially those guys in "The Greatest Trade Ever: The Behind-the-Scenes Story of How John Paulson Defied Wall Street and Made Financial History" by Gregory Zuckerman, whose positions moved against them while the subprime rally continued and they were almost wiped out or their investors pulling funds because the account is down just before or when the trade starts developing. Search Amazon.com for The Greatest Trade Ever: The Behind-the-Scenes Story of How John Paulson Defied Wall Street and Made Financial History

I believe the AUD position should rally when Austalian market open as it should follow the US market as the GS case seen as a non issue on the current market or economy. Last night when I entered the trade I thought the European market would have seen it that way but they didn't plus they have the issue of the vulcano ash that is crimpling their economy as far as air travels. Still learning little nuances of the Forex Market. Assian session, European session, US session all interpret the US news different. Seems the reaction to the news is exagerated as they try to figure out how the US market will react to it. Going into the US session if the interpretations and reactions are the same the move builds on it. If not the correction begins. I shall be testing on this assumption/observation. I say assumption also because sometimes the market can make you feel like is what you observe really what's going on.

My view on the GS, SEC CDS case

Fridays news with Goldman Saahs is bullshit IMO.
The way I'm looking at it is the SEC case is bullshit. It will probably get settled. The market was nervous and people was just waiting for some reason to sell. It was options expiration week and market had rallied substantially. It needed cooling down. They heard GS, SEC, and Sued in one sentence and they sold.

GS has returned substancially from the low. The range for the day was 155.55 - 186.41 and the close was 160.70. There has been a buy the dips attitude since the rally began last March. If earnings are good this quarter then I don't see why the attitude will change and so far Intel was good. So mantra is to keep doing what's working till it stops working.

My biggest problem with the case is that the transactions are between accredited institution investors who are supposed to be the smartest people on Wall Street with huge research teams. They made bad bets that's all. When the instruments that the SEC are talking about were created people betting against the sub prime were losing money on the bets and some people got wiped out or were near wiping out for betting againts the sub prime market too early. I found it hard to believe that these big banks selling the insurance policies that people would not default on their mortgages were a bunch of crazy people.

In a nutshell from what I gather from reading the book "The Greatest Trade Ever: The Behind-the-Scenes Story of How John Paulson Defied Wall Street and Made Financial History" and listening the interview Lahde on Financial Sense

The instrument in question is something called collateralized debt obligations(CDO) and Credit Default Swaps (CDS). CDO in a nutshell are loans. CDS started out being the lender buying insurance to protect against the loan they just wrote. Pretty much the same as Private Mortgage Insurance (PMI) or those who know about mortgages. Lets say you buy a house with a mortgage; the lender usually make sure there is Private Mortgage Insurance (PMI) that the borrower pays every month so that if the you default on the loan the bank get paid back the loan from the insurer.

Wall Streat to that a step further now where instead of just the lender having the PMI on your house, anyone can take out an insurance policy that you are going to default on your house payment and get paid the value of the mortgage if you defaulted. On Wall streat it was done with a pool of loans or even against the company that issued those loans. Now the person who wrote those insurance policies usually do their homework and calculate the risk of the person defaulting and charge a premium based on their model if they decided the person was worth the risk of insuring.

Here is a Youtube video that explains CDS some more with diagrams There are other videos there that give a little more or another perspective.

The SEC is saying that GS did not disclose to the insurance company that the people who they were selling the insurance policy to were the people who picked out what loans would be covered in the policy.

My argument is that this is totally irrelevant. The insurance company only needed to know what they were insuring to make their decision which they knew. The person buying the policy or the person who created the policy is not as relevant as what is being insured. The way I understand these CDS usually work is that someone wanted to make a loan and then they ask thier broker to shop for someone who would provide insurance for the loan. Thus the person wanting to buy the CDS was usually some involvment in the loan and/or the creation of the CDS.

We'll just have to see I guess what comes out of it.

Broker pocket 119 pips on my trade. Real bucket shop job.

I was long EUR/USD from last week. I had a target sell or take profit sell set for 1.3505 from then. Sunday I tried to delete the take profit orders before market opened but that's not allowed so I called the broker and emailed them @ 17:35 EST when the brokerage was open. They told me the could not change or delete the order as they had to wait for it to open just like I was.

Sunday at 18:00 EST when the market opened the EUR/USD gapped open at 1.3624 The broker filled my order at 1.3505 immediately. EUR/USD even after 18 hours still have not traded that low. That is more than 119 pips difference. The broker pocketed 119 pips of my trade. OUCH!!

I Should have gotten the open price b/c if I was short w/ a stop order I would have had to accept the 1.3624 as best price. Is it a standard thing for customers to get lousy fills on Gaps in their favor b/c they had a lower target price than open price? Kinda reminds me of Jessie Livermore book about bucketshop jobs they did against the customers. This is BLATENT SKIMMING here by my broker.

The broker is Interbank FX (IBFX.com). That was a real bucketshop job.

If I was short and had a stop in place they would have filled my order at 1.3624 as best filled and I totally agree with that. I would have eaten the 119 pip loss and accept it as part of trading. I should also get the best filled on the upside also. That is some really crappy thing they did. I find INTERBANK FX (IBFX.com)actions of not filling me at the gap open price as deplorable

Here is the broker side
My discussion with IBFX about the lousy fill.

Chat start time Apr 12, 2010 9:42:20 PM EST
...
Client Services 30: Do you have the Order# of the specific order you discuss?
Ki6080944 : 41497479
Client Services 30: 4149749 doesn't relate to slippage because it closed at a take profit. With IBFX, take profits always close at the exact price of the take profit. In contrast, stop losses with IBFX have slippage because they close at the best, available price after the price gap. Since this order had a take profit, the order closed correctly at the exact price of the take profit even though the price gapped well above the price of the T/P at Sunday's opening.
Client Services 30: You just need to realize that with IBFX as your broker with price gaps, stop losses close at the best, available price; but take profits close at the exact price of the take profit.
Client Services 30: Do you like to leave trades opened over the weekend often?
Ki6080944 : yes
Ki6864844 : I leave trades open till I am right
Client Services 30: So you understand the risks of leaving trades opened over the weekend on stop losses? If the price gaps alot, the best, available price where your stop loss closes could end up being far from the exact price of the stop loss.
Ki6864844 : I sat in that trade for 1 week through the down move waiting for the news. I even added additional funds to obsorb the draw down
Client Services 30: Unfortunately, price gaps won't work in your favor on take profits with IBFX. IBFX does execute take profits at the exact price of the take profit even with a price gap.
Client Services 30: In contrast, price gaps can work greatly against you on stop losses.
Ki6864844 : It's not fair that I have to feel the pain of the gap but not the benefits
Ki6864844 : With my other brokers I have never had to worry about this. I would expect I get filled at best price offer if available
Ki6864844 : 1.3505 still have traded after 21 hours.
Client Services 30: I can't speak for other brokers, but I understand your feedback and appreciate it.
Ki6864844 : So someone got the benefit of my trade without any risk
Client Services 30: With IBFX, this is the way take profits work in the event of price gaps.
Ki6864844 : we are talking 119 pips. So imagine how upset I was. I had even sent an email before market open to cancel the order and also made a phone call to cancel or modify order before market open
Client Services 30: You can't cancel, open, nor close orders before market opening. Neither can an IBFX rep. When the market is closed, it is closed so no transcations can take palace until Sunday's opening time.
Client Services 30: That is why it is so risky to leave trades opened for the weekend. You cannot modify, close, or open new orders until Sunday at 6 p.m. EST, so your trades are subject to whatever prices are offered at Sunday's opening times.
...
Ki6864844 : I took all the risk in that trade.
...
Client Services 30: I appreciate your feedback about how if a client has to accept risks of stop losses closing far from the price of the stop loss because of slippiage and price gaps, it seems appropriate to benefit from price gaps on take profits. I will definitely forward that feedback to my supervisors. However, Order# 41497479 was closed at the correct price per IBFX's decision to close take profits at the exact price of the take profit.
Client Services 30: No technical error occurred on the close of 4149749 at its take profit.
...

Chat end time Apr 12, 2010 9:42:20 PM EST

update to those Greek plays

I talked about in previous posts. The Greeks have gotten some loans in place for them to use if needed. All the stocks mentioned are up except for 1.
Checking my yahoo where I keep track of them. http://kijar.blogspot.com/2010/02/toying-with-some-greek-investment-idea.html Some of the stocks might have been referred to in posts elsewhere but instead of me going to the different posts to update I'll just do it here.
Click Picture to see Bigger and Clearer table

Something on the lighter side in DC. Very Funny - Comedian Joe Wong at RTCA Dinner

What was I looking at when I went short the EUR\USD at 15:50

I was looking at the 50% Fib and a resistance zone. The EUR\USD been down all day and then took off and seemed like it didn't have anymore steam taking too long to continue those aggressive move it moved up with. I also looked at another chart and saw the same candlestick pattern before the 2 previous big moves. I then switched to the 5 min chart and shorted on the second down candle.

EUR/USD 2010-03-17 03:84 Chart

EUR/USD violating that resistance area. Area was tested a few times in Feb and on the 12th of March and Yesterday and it finally breaking through tonight in the European Premarket session. That was a good setup area to play. Had consolidation and coming off a strong day in the US session.

2010-03-16, Tue

Made 3 trades. 1 good. 1 loss, 1 b/e that could have been a winner if I didn't change my stop loss to a bigger profit target from my original analysis. All part of the game. Sometimes I think to yourself, I would have loved to be in on that big run but if I never let my target be big enough for the big run then I will never make that big profit. The lesson here today was that I saw the mode of the market and my original target was based on that.

USD.EUR 2010-03-14 Around 22:45 EST

2010-03-14, Sun

20:47 EST Long EUR 1.3759 tgt 1.3785, Trade supposed to be on the double bottom. It fell through the bottom though as soon as I placed order. I placed a market order and as down 6 pips as soon as the order was placed. EUR seemd to have formed a bottom and was starting a new uptrend so i put a stop at about 40 pips away. Not a good risk/reward. Need to make sure the bull candle is formed properly first also. Daily Pivot Point is at 1.3741.
09:34 EST, Down 15 points from entry. Waiting to be right. :-)
Earlier I was tempted to play the Double Top but held off because I said it was a bull trend and I am going to start trading with the trend instead of counter. Seemed that the short trade would have been good . Target would have been 15 pips but it fell 28 pips.
09:50 EST broke below PP down -23 pips, still letting the trade play out.
Before I entered the trade I did not take into consideration what the ES, YM, etc was doing. They were trading down up until 22:00 EST where they found support.

I made the stop that low because entering the trade I was confident that there will be a reversal but still to the upside and wasn't worried about a stop but on second thought it doesn't seem like a good idea. When I had done my analysis I figured that there were many support points around the pivot and then below that was the area I lable Second support. I chose to put it slightly below the S1 pivot.

21:45 Considering whether I should double down if we get to the are that was the major support that I labeled second support.

23:45 EST Second support area at 1.3725 is being tested. Down 32 pips on the position. Next major support area would be at the WP 1.3658 which is 60 pips away. Not willing to risk that much pips. Below that we have 1.3688 which is also a S2 pivot.

EUR/USD 2010-03-12 11:24 Chart

chart showing resistance where I went

short this morning after big spike up.

USD.EUR 2010-02-26

was checking out the EUR going long where the EUR seem to be bouncing off the 200 DEMA and R1. Seem 200 DEMA since yesterday been acting as support

ES 2010-02-24

Toying with some Greek investment idea to see if there is the possible outcome as we did with US crisis

Toying with the idea of investing in Greek companies to see if there are bargain on good companies to be had kinda similar to how it was with the crash here in the US and the bounce and. I pretty much missed out on that whole rally because I refused to believe in it or just investing in the wrong instruments. Often time I would be in options and those didn't work in my favor as I would often be too early. Longer term options were too expensive and during the time I didn't think the rally would have doubled, trippled or quadrupled for some stocks as it ended up doing.

So based on that lesson I am going to look for some Greek companies and I know there are others out there that will have the same ideas so I will look for their ideas also

Came up with Helenic Telecommunications (NYSE:OTE) which is a Greek telecom company that pays 7% div,
Research on OTE lead me to a recommendation of OTE, National Bank of Greece (NYSE:NBG) and Coco Cola Bottling Helena (NYSE:CCH) by James Altucher, managing dir at Formula Cap on CNBC Fri Feb 12, 2010. I am also finding other recommendations for these same 3 stocks.

Chart of Market and enlarged YM 1day 15min 200 period support