Thursday 3rd June -Easing myself back into the business – +52

As mentioned in a previous post I’ve been away from the markets for approx the last 10-12 days.  I see and hear that there’s been a few great moves in that time I was away. 

So yesterday I took none of my own trades as I simply looked at charts and tried to get a view on what had been happening whilst I’d been away.  I sat down this morning to trade but had two concerns hanging over me a) it’s NFP day tomorrow and b) it’s been a bank holiday week and schools have also been off as well.  Often that can mean that big players are also away from their desks and it’s just the junior traders left to hold the fort during such time.  More of this later.

So today I took two of my early morning breakouts to ease myself back into trading.  The results were as follows:

GBPUSD

1. I had a long order set-up for GBPUSD which also melded with my Relative Strength Filter showing Sterling Strength and Dollar Weakness on my timescale.  I placed the order a few pips the other side of the BRN at 1.4705.  Price triggered and pushed north before falling back.  I was concerned that perhaps we had a false breakout setting up (fewer big players wanting to provide momentum) but decided to stay with the trade for the moment.

2. After going sideways price finally decides to push north and it hits my break-even point.  I’m concerned that sterling is putting in hi-test bars across the board and that the euro is also strengthening against the pound.

3.  Price starts to roll-over and I decided its time to head for the exit.  I manually close at 1.4720 for +15 points.  As I mentioned earlier I’m concerned that there may well not be the momentum behind the moves this week and I’m happy to step aside at the first sign of stalled momentum.  Price drops hard down to my entry point before reversing and heading north again.  In fact cable pushes north and whilst never reaching what would have been my final target it does head north a bit before rolling over hard.  I’m quite happy though. 

GBPJPY

1.  As with GBPUSD Sterling is looking strong across the board and the Yen is looking weak so I have a long order in GJ for 135.65  Price triggers and heads north.  Like Cable it falters and I consider closing but decide to let the trade run.

2. Price hits my break even point and I’m now in a risk-free trade.

3. Price gets to my final target of 136.10 but I’m not taken out on the spread (anybody got a broker with a good spread on GJ?) Price continues to waft around just above the 136 handle and makes a couple of attempts to  move north, all of which stall just in front of my target.  Seeing the stalling price action across Stirling I decided to step aside 8 points away from my target and settle for a profit of +37.

So my first trades after a good holiday and I’m thankful to step away with a few cheeky pips profit for a total of +52 pips.  It’s been a strange week and I’m just happy to step aside when I believe momentum to be faltering. I know that after some time away it can take me days or weeks to get back into the swing of the market. In the meantime a few cheeky pips here and there are not to be sniffed at.

Trade well,

FXTrader Paul