Other trades this week

To be honest, I usually am exhausted by the end of the week. TGIF and all that. I frequently lighten up or go flat. Often I don’t trade at all on Fridays.

But I wanted to touch on the other trades I was in this week.

On Tuesday I went out at 90 pips profit on the Ozzie. That was a mistake since I'd forgotten to move my profit target up as I moved my stop up. That was .8660 and I was looking for a place to go long again. It's high was .8775 for the week so I definitely, stupidly, missed out on more profit but since I would have kept moving my stop and target up, I wouldn't have gotten all of it. So it's not too big a disappointment. I put in two buy orders, one at the top of the range and one at an uptrend line. I also shorted the Ozzie at minor support of .8720 yesterday (gosh, was that only yesterday? It feels like such a long week with the sideways movements on the charts). Since that point it dropped back to the top of its range (As in home on the range? Mama? It’s me, your pogo sticking but not too high, wayward child) and triggered my buy order at .8678. It's ranging around this point so one position is slightly in profit and one is slightly underwater. Back to the charts for that one.

I also shorted the drearily dwindling USD/CHF at 1.0309 on its tiny rally yesterday. One would think there’d be at least a dead cat bounce soon, wouldn’t one? By gosh, the 1-, 5-, 15-, 30-minute and even one hour chart is showing an uptrend. It’s nasty little low yesterday at 1.0275 must have brought out the bottom fishers as well as those that love to buy lows whether or not there is any near term support under them. A quick look at the three-hour chart isn’t all that encouraging. The three white candles could be interpreted as something Steve Nison calls the Three White Soldiers (aka Three Advancing Soldiers). These can indicate more strength is coming if they appear after a period of stable prices or a low price area. (Japanese Candlestick Charting Techniques). Well the prices have been low but they haven’t been lingering there long. The three white candles could also be interpreted as what he calls the Three Methods. This is a long black candle followed by three small, often white real body candles that “hold within the first session’s high-low range.” (Ibid. p. 276) It’s bearish. Thank you, candlesticks, for those two equally interesting interpretations. But I don’t mean to sound sarcastic. I do use candles but as Steve himself would be the first to say, they can’t be used in isolation. Also, to be fair, the third candlestick shows some weakening with its upper shadow. And then there’s that bearish shooting star. This uptick doesn’t look sustainable right now but as I said earlier, there’s a dead cat bounce in here somewhere. My suspicion is it will retest those yesterday lows at least. Here's the three hour chart:

Finally, ta-da, the Euro. It’s currently up 110 pips from last week. Wow! For this we waited? The resistance it’s encountering is real so we’ll just have to wait and see for that one. I’m out of it for now.

None of these are trade recommendations. All trading involves substantial risk.

© Dianne Fecteau, 2009. No part of this material may be reproduced in any form, or referred to in any other publication, without the express written permission of the author.