Tuesday 27th October 2009 Swissie – Scratch Trade

There was no discretionary trade on Cable for me this morning. When I looked at it I felt it was just messy and lacking any direction or conviction.

So here is a trade I took on the USDCHF.  I used to trade this pair a lot many years back but these days not so often.  However my early analysis for the day said I should be buying USD and selling CHF so this was the ideal pair to look for a possible buy trade!  At point 1 price has pulled back from its recent highs.  Though I wanted to go long there was no real signal or trigger for me to go long.  I waited and waited and then I had a 4 Bar Fractal entry show up at point 2 so I placed my order to go long at 1.0782 with a stop at 0746.  My target was 0836 giving me a nice 1.5 reward to risk.  Price triggered and eventually rose to previous resistance (point 3)and placed me about 15 points in profit.  It then fell away and put in a bearish 4 Bar Fractal so I moved up my stop to below the low of the bar at point 4 which would have meant a loss of 12 points had it triggered.

Price then just went sideways for a good long period and just bounced about my entry point.  I had to leave the office and I was bored of the trade so I just closed at entry for a scratch trade.

UPDATE – well of course you know what happened don’t you?  Later (much later it must be said) price broke through resistance and rose to hit my target at 0836.  C’est la vie.  I did not know that when I had to make a decision and the trade had already been running for over 3 hours so overall I’m cool.

Learning points:

In NLP they say that people make the right decision at the time based upon what they know.  I had no idea whether price would continue up so strongly.  Also the trade had run for 3 hours without any joy.  My best trades tend to go my way straight from the off.  I had to leave and could not monitor it so I was cool to close it down.

Perhaps in future take some off at the next major support or resistance line that would have allowed you to take some small profit from such a trade today.