Anyone here into FOREX? [Archive] - Page 3

Music_Producer

Sep 18, 2006, 10:02 PM

I'm not entirely sure what I did, but I seemed to have made $1.42 (Game).

I bought 1000 EUR/USD at 1.26719 and then sold 1000 at 1.26861. I guess that's quite a few pips?

This was in the wake of the Current Account news? I wasn't exactly sure what to expect, so I sort of rode the wave.

MP, your thoughts?

Honamos.. you made 15 pips. 15*$0.10 = $1.5 or you made $1.42 so you made a little less than 15.. probably 14 pips and something. There are pips, and then there are pipettes (which are like fractional pips) So instead of quoting the eur as 1.26719 and 1.26861 you can simply display them as 1.2671 and 1.2686. In your Oanda preferences, simply untick 'display pipettes'

This makes it easier to calculate pips.. 1.2686-1.2671 = 15. Had you bought 10,000 units.. that would be $14.20 profit, if you had bought 100,000 units.. you would have made $140.20 and so on.

Remember, that Oanda 'stole' your 15 pips because of the spread. If they had kept their spread at 3 pips or 5 pips, you would have made 20 pips easily. I used to make 15-25 pips regularly when Oanda kept their spreads at a sane level.

Tomorrow morning will be an important trade (if the news deviates) Its the Canadian CPI.. the core number is important. If it comes out higher than expected, the CAD $ will go up (or, the USD/CAD symbol will go down) and vice versa.

Why does higher CPI push up the currency? Logically, inflation is bad for the economy right? I mean, if the Canadian CPI comes out high, then it sucks because everything is more expensive in Canada. Then why does the Canadian $ go up? It has all to do with interest rates. A higher CPI means higher inflation. which means that the finance ministry will want to curb that inflation by *raising* interest rates.

So the markets buy the CAD $ because they think "Ahh.. high CPI, thats increased inflation.. so the cad $ interest rates have a better chance of being hiked"

Music_Producer

Sep 19, 2006, 08:38 AM

*and* a solution to Oanda's insane spreads.. I traded the GBP/USD instead of the EUR/USD. Why? Because GBP/USD spreads were 9 pips, while that of EUR/USD was 15. Both move in a similar fashion though, during US news releases.. so I thought.. what the heck? Lets try it out. And it worked great!

Bagged 19 beautiful pips :D The US PPI came out worse than expected, and Housing came out worse as well. Geez, when do we ever get good news regarding the US?? Both US Politics + Economy = Crap :p

57937

honamos

Sep 19, 2006, 10:16 AM

The big deal for tomorrow looks like the Interest Rate Statement. Any thoughts on that?

~Shard~

Sep 19, 2006, 10:37 AM

Nice trade Music_Producer! Do you mind me asking how many lots you usually trade with, or does it vary a great deal?

I funded my CMC account today so I should be set up for trading tomorrow. Don't think I'll trade the economic news tomorrow, but at least I'll be back in the game again. ;) Since I'll have real money in the account I'll stick to what I know for now - stocks, commodities, etc. - and will probably still have a few "practice runs" with the forex trading before I put some money on the line. 1% margin is tempting, but in a dangerous way. :o ;) :cool:

Music_Producer

Sep 19, 2006, 08:13 PM

I didn't trade the US interest rate decision.. because its too early for me (..er.. i wake up at 2 pm PST :o )

However, if you guys followed the news and had traded the Thai Baht (I dont know which platform offers it) but damn.. obviously because of the coup in Thailand this would have been a massive trade.. as the Baht fell like a rock.

I think it will continue to fall depending on the situation.

Music_Producer

Sep 19, 2006, 08:15 PM

Hey Shard, my lots usually vary.. depending on the kind of news. If its an interest rate announcement, I usually have anywhere from 5-8 million units, ready to be traded.

Major news releases.. I employ about 500,000 units (usually) However, when Oanda went berserk with their spreads.. I narrowed it down to 50,000 units - just to be on the safe side.

honamos

Sep 25, 2006, 04:51 PM

Any thoughts?

~Shard~

Sep 25, 2006, 10:54 PM

Yikes, I've been a slacker lately when it comes to Forex. :o Too busy trading indices actually... TSX60, NASDAQ100, S&P500...

Any thoughts on the rest of this week's announcements Music_Producer and what you're planning on trade?

Music_Producer

Sep 27, 2006, 08:40 AM

Hey guys, sorry for the delay in posting.. was in San Diego with the wife.. had a great weekend.

Traded the US durable orders report right now.. as usual, the US economy is showing more disappointing signs.. the Eur (and GBP) shot up by 20-30 pips. I managed to bag 7 pips in 2 seconds.. didn't want to risk anything.. traded a huge lot today though (2 million units) .. so you know what my profit was :)

58573

Honamos.. I never trade speeches.. they are too vague at times, and the market can move in any direction. I prefer to trade solid reports which have a tendency to move the currencies.. like today's report, GDP reports, NFP (non farm payroll) Interest rate decisions (if unexpected) , CPI, PPI, etc.

At 10 am EST is the US Home Sales report.. but i wont be trading that, as i'm off to sleep.. and i think the report will be lower than forecast.. and the markets might be expecting that anyway.

Music_Producer

Oct 2, 2006, 10:18 PM

I'm back! Was in San Diego.. had a great time.. anyway, not much happening in the forex world as all the reports were quite tepid.. today was exciting though.

The GBP Manufacturing PMI came out better than expected and the pound rose 20-25 pips against the $, I got 8 pips. As I traded, I was keeping an eye on Oanda's spreads as well, and surprisingly.. they didn't widen the spread on GBP/USD.

Now the more important.. and scary trade. The US ISM Manufacturing Index. This trade was a royal mess! I didn't even trade this report, but I traded *before* the report came out. Here's why..

I had all my windows open (news, quotes, etc.) and all of a sudden.. at 6am or around that time.. I saw the GBP jumping up steadily. I knew the pound was stronger because of the good GBP results (which came out at 1.30 am PST) but this was 6 am PST.. so why the hell was the pound jumping up like that? It jumped 10 pips, then 5,10,5,10.. and kept going up.

So, I got excited :D . which by the way is a big mistake. I usually never trade seeing activity like this but i don't know.. felt like a schoolboy.. lol.. I got in and grabbed around 30 pips. I got out, and I thought.. ok this thing should slow down or drop. But it didnt. The pound just kept going up.

Then the news platform came out with a "US $ drops against all majors on rumors of soft ISM" Crazy! I wonder who started the rumor that the ISM numbers would be low.. but it sure affected GBP/USD, EUR/USD and all the other currencies. The GBP rose by 100 pips before the actual ISM report came out!

By then I was a little too nervous.. as the markets had already 'priced in' the soft ISM. I had a feeling that if the ISM numbers did come out low.. the pound shouldn't move up anyway because it had already gone up 100 pips.. kinda like it was out of steam.

Anyway, the ISM did come out lower than expected at 7 am.. and the pound went up by 5 pips.. and then started falling (obviously) and went up and down.. a crazy trading range. I was amused just watching what was happening.. there was no way I was going to enter this trade.

So, this is the first time something like this has happened. There is always an explanation for price moves before a report.. I am sure no one leaked anything, but it was just common sense that the ISM reports would be low.. and someone made it sound like an 'official' rumor.. or leak or whatever.

Music_Producer

Oct 3, 2006, 04:37 AM

6 pips on the UK Construction news reports.. man I should launch a hedge fund.. unlike the Amaranth LLC retards who invested most of their trades in oil (and lost somewhere around 6 billion) I think I'd be pretty successful! :D

59089

Music_Producer

Oct 3, 2006, 06:00 AM

So I was done trading for today, but I had all my windows open and was just browsing.. when my news server popped up with a "North Korea to conduct Nuclear Test"

It took me a few seconds to register that and realize that it would be horrible for the Japanese Yen. So I quickly bought GBP/JPY (or USD/JPY .. wouldn't have mattered) and just as I expected, the GBP/JPY shot up by 45-50 pips. I nabbed 32 pips and got out.

The GBP/JPY slowly came down (not all the way though) because this was just an announcement.. and not an actual test that North Korea had conducted. Had they conducted a live test, I would have stayed in the trade much longer and GBP/JPY would have easily crossed 200 pips or so.

It was sheer luck that I had all my trading windows open (usually i close them when i'm done trading) News like this can result in massive profits.. but of course, you can't predict them.. but if you're alert, you can jump in and you get the best trades.. with minimum spreads.

59096

~Shard~

Oct 3, 2006, 11:40 PM

Thanks for the updates Music_Producer - you sure do have good luck when it comes to forex! Well, I shouldn't say "luck" exactly - you do obviously know what you're doing. ;) :)

Amaranth are a bunch of idiots. If you ever want to open a hedge fund, just let me know. You can handle forex and I'll handle commodities, sectors and indicies... :D :cool:

Music_Producer

Oct 5, 2006, 01:33 AM

Hey Shard, of course I'll keep you in mind if I do launch a hedge fund :) We might just argue about what to name it though.. lol!

There are two reports to watch out for tomorrow (Wednesday morning).. the UK interest rate decision and the EUR interest rate decision. Lets see what happens.

~Shard~

Oct 5, 2006, 08:40 AM

Hey Shard, of course I'll keep you in mind if I do launch a hedge fund :) We might just argue about what to name it though.. lol!

I think as long as we don't name it "Amaranth" we'll be okay... :eek: ;) :D

How about "MPS Holdings"? (Music_Producer / Shard).

I've had some excellent trades with oil, nat-gas and gold this past week, but this is not the place to be talking about that I suppose - we'll try and stick on topic with forex. :o ;)

Music_Producer

Oct 5, 2006, 07:36 PM

I think as long as we don't name it "Amaranth" we'll be okay... :eek: ;) :D

How about "MPS Holdings"? (Music_Producer / Shard).

I've had some excellent trades with oil, nat-gas and gold this past week, but this is not the place to be talking about that I suppose - we'll try and stick on topic with forex. :o ;)

MPS Holdings sounds cool. How about Altivec Funds? :D :D or iHedge :p

Any insight is appreciated Shard.. regarding oil, gold, metals, commodities.. etc. This is not just forex.. but trading in general. :) I guess I'm good at forex..but when it comes to stocks and other trades.. I suck.. big time. I don't know how in the world you trade gas and metals.. is it just based on technicals?

Made three excellent trades today.. first was the UK interest rate decision. It was forecast that the Bank of England wouldn't raise interest rates.. but the markets had a slight expecation that maybe the interest rates would be hiked. So when the London session opened.. the GBP/USD went up.. about 50-60 pips.. and then stayed there.

So I had 3 options -

1. If the BOE (bank of england) hiked rates.. I would hit 'buy' immediately
2. If they kept rates the same, I would hit 'sell' because the pound had already risen so many pips
3. If they reduced the rates (not a chance, but still) I would have hit 'sell' with all my money.. because the pound would have dropped 200-250 pips for sure.

The BOE announced that they didn't change the rates, so I sold the GBP/USD.. and sure enough, it fell by 30 pips. I grabbed 15 pips

Next trade was the EUR interest rate announcement. The ECB was expected to raise interest rates today.. but they didn't.. so I sold the EUR/USD. However, the reaction wasn't that great.. it dropped by only 10 pips or so.. and then hovered around there. So I got my profit of 10 pips and exited the trade. Eventually it did go lower.

The last trade was the US unemployment claims. It was expected at 315 k.. it came in at 307 k or something .. so it was much lower than expected.. and hence, I sold the EUR/USD. It went down gradually, and I got about 15 pips.

So totally I made 40 pips for the day. :)

Possible trades tomorrow are the Candian Employment Change and the US Nonfarm employment change.

~Shard~

Oct 5, 2006, 11:29 PM

MPS Holdings sounds cool. How about Altivec Funds? :D :D or iHedge :p

Oooh, I like Altivec Funds.... ;) :D

Any insight is appreciated Shard.. regarding oil, gold, metals, commodities.. etc. This is not just forex.. but trading in general.

Fair enough. Every once and a while I'll try to some of my strategies and insights into other forms of trading as well then - I am by no means trying to hoard my knowledge. ;) Especially after how open and helpful you have been wrt forex. :)

I guess I'm good at forex..but when it comes to stocks and other trades.. I suck.. big time. I don't know how in the world
you trade gas and metals.. is it just based on technicals?

Technicals? Somewhat, yeah. If I see a really big swing, I'll jump on it for a short term trade, but I definitely don't like trading purely on technicals. That being said, I am an excellent chart analyst, FWIW, so I can at detect buy/sell signals based on MACD, RSI, stochastics, etc. If big news happens, yeah, that can throw technicals out the window, but as with anything else, they have their place.

One method I really focus on is seasonality. If you do the research, you'll find that during certain times of the year, certain sectors perform exceptionally well. And in some cases, 10 out of the last 10 years, certain sectors have seen an average gain of 10% (as an example) during that period. The past is no indicator of future behavior of course, but again, it works many times, and I take advantage of it.

In general, I'll trade individual stocks, sectors, indicies, spot metal prices and monthly contracts on commodities. I used to trade options (puts/calls) but got out of that after I started getting careless.

As I said, I'll try and type up some more information for you in the future. And, if I can screen capture at the time or something, I can even post some trades. If nothing else, I could post some charts of interest...

Great trades today by the way! :)

Possible trades tomorrow are the Candian Employment Change and the US Nonfarm employment change.

Yeah, I'll be watching the CAD employment change myself. I don't know if I'll be able to trade it or not, but I'd like to. :o (If there's something to trade in the first place, of course.... ;))

Music_Producer

Oct 6, 2006, 09:07 AM

The NonFarm Report came out WAY worse than expected.. 50 k instead of 120 k. So I jumped and bought GBP/USD .. and I made 40 pips :D One second after I closed the trade and the bloody GBP dropped.. dropped by 80 pips :eek: :eek:

The GBP is still dropping by another 40-60 pips against the USD. Man these US Bulls are retards.. they love buying the $ no matter how crappy the news is.. and thats just what happened today. I was really quick today.. got in *before* the spike..and got out promptly. I shudder to think what would have happened if I had stayed in the trade a little longer. Phew!!!

59360

~Shard~

Oct 6, 2006, 10:53 AM

njmac

Oct 6, 2006, 09:11 PM

...

man I should launch a hedge fund.. unlike the Amaranth LLC retards who invested most of their trades in oil (and lost somewhere around 6 billion) I think I'd be pretty successful! :D

yes, yes you should ;)

I am going to try and gets some trades in for October. I wish I had enough money to make $100 + a pip... the most I can make for now is $2 pip but its cool because its just a few minutes of "work" :cool:

Hoef

Oct 6, 2006, 09:39 PM

man I should launch a hedge fund.. unlike the Amaranth LLC retards who invested most of their trades in oil (and lost somewhere around 6 billion) I think I'd be pretty successful!
yes, yes you should ;)

We could actually start a "distributed" hedge fund ... get couple of folks in various times zones and pool some money. It would be relatively easy to get more money in and we'd be charging a 2% fee :)

Music_Producer

Oct 13, 2006, 08:40 AM

Hoef, forget the 2% fee.. more like 50% of profits ;) :D

Today's trade was great.. made 13 pips on GBP/USD.. US retail sales came out weaker than expected. I also quite expected that the GBP would jump up.. and then sink against the US$. For some reason, everytime there's bad news for the US economy.. the dollar loses ground against other currencies..for a very short time. In a few seconds, the dollar jumps back up crushing any initial spike. That's exactly what happened during the US trade balance announcement.. and it's happening right now. Which is why, get your profits and exit the trade asap.

I am quite tempted to 'fade the spike' i.e. sell at what you think is the top of the spike. It's risky though, so I wouldn't attempt it, but one of these days I know the fool in me is going to take over and try it out.. just for kicks. I'll trade a very tiny lot so as to minimize any losses.

59784

smunderdog

Oct 16, 2006, 12:50 PM

Ran across this thread a few weeks ago after doing a search on Google for FOREX trading. This thread came up on about the 3rd or 4th page...have enjoyed reading it and learned quite a bit along the way!

Have to admit that I'm a total newbie to on line trading, but just got tired of that infomercial for the FOREX software that is on all weekend and finally decided to see what FOREX was all about. Don't see myself "buying into" the hype of the informercial, but the way you are all playing the game seems to appeal to me...

I've opened a practice account on Oanda and have only played around long enough to understand how to put an order in...haven't practiced on any actual news reports yet.

One question - is there an easy way to see what the spread is? I understand that the width of the line on the graph represents the spread, but is there somewhere numerically that shows it?

Also - I've noticed the thread isn't as active as it was...has everyone migrated over to the mac user group that was mentioned a few pages back?

What is the concensus now about the Oanda spread increase...since I'm not tied to any platform at this early stage in my learning curve, what other platforms should I try out?

~Shard~

Oct 16, 2006, 03:53 PM

Also - I've noticed the thread isn't as active as it was...has everyone migrated over to the mac user group that was mentioned a few pages back?

I can't speak about the Mac user group, as I haven't joined up myself, but I am still an active viewer if nothing else in this thread. I used to post more as well, but I've been so busy lately that my trading has taken a back seat. Hopefully that will change in a month or so.

Regardless, glad you found the thread educational. :cool:

savar

Oct 16, 2006, 04:33 PM

Also - I've noticed the thread isn't as active as it was...has everyone migrated over to the mac user group that was mentioned a few pages back?

I'm still lurking. I haven't seen any news to trade on recently that wasn't while I was at work. (Bernanke today, e.g.)

What user group are you referring to?

Also, anybody played around with MT4? I was interested in coding a trading strategy platform, but then I found MT4. Looks pretty cool as a way to model trading strategies and then backtest. Any experience with it? The documentation isn't great and I have yet to dig in and do any real development with it.

Music_Producer

Oct 17, 2006, 04:40 AM

I've opened a practice account on Oanda and have only played around long enough to understand how to put an order in...haven't practiced on any actual news reports yet.

One question - is there an easy way to see what the spread is? I understand that the width of the line on the graph represents the spread, but is there somewhere numerically that shows it?

Also - I've noticed the thread isn't as active as it was...has everyone migrated over to the mac user group that was mentioned a few pages back?

What is the concensus now about the Oanda spread increase...since I'm not tied to any platform at this early stage in my learning curve, what other platforms should I try out?

Hey smunder.. this thread gets active when I post :p When there are no trades.. I usually don't post. Today was good (the GBP CPI numbers) and I traded the GBP/USD multiple times in a few seconds/minutes for a total of about 12 pips. I got most of my profit on the second spike.

60036

You can see the spread in Oanda.. you see where the quote section is? Where you see the 1.2456/1.2459 kinda thing for currencies.. there's a little arrow on the top.. when you click on that, it 'expands' the window so you can see the spread. Actually, let me show it to you graphically - oops.. i can't do that here.. so i am going to do it in the next 2 posts (i cant post more than one picture at a time in a post it seems)

Music_Producer

Oct 17, 2006, 04:41 AM

Here's the normal view of the quote panel -

60037

Edit : Never mind, both pictures show up. The second one is where you can see the spread. All I did was click on that arrow on the top (before F) You see 2.8 is the spread for GBP/USD.. 1.5 for EUR/USd etc.

Music_Producer

Oct 17, 2006, 04:58 AM

For the rest of your question.. yes, Oanda has crappy spreads during news trading.. but it's still (in my opinion) very good for trading.. because they execute when you click 'buy' or 'sell'

I have had quite a few experiences with MB trading, etc.. where I click 'buy' and the bloody thing doesn't execute till a few seconds.. by that time.. the price starts dropping.. and then it executes. Then when i hit sell because i don't want a loss.. it takes a few seconds to execute.. that pissed me off. So much for all the advertising they do and the promises of instant trading.

So if Oanda jacks up the spread between EUR/USD to 15 pips, and you get in at the spike (or before) and the EUR moves up 30-40 pips.. you can still make a lot of profit. If it moves up only 15 pips and then back down.. you'll make a loss. Lately Oanda has been keeping their spreads reasonable though, like today the GBP/USD spread was 2.8 instead of 15. I was a little surprised.. maybe they have had a lot of members leave, so they have decided to play nice. Who knows?

During unexpected interest rate decisions.. currencies can move by 80-100 pips.. so a 15 pip spread is nothing compared to the profit you can make. Having said that, I still have to find a broker who gives me instant executions combined with low spreads. I don't mind paying a commission per trade.

Please stay away from FXCM. They are the worst. They will freeze your trades during news time.. it's just ridiculous. Or, they will accept your trade, and not release it for a few minutes. So you could end up making tons of profit or losses. The 400:1 margin ration is also dangerous.

A lot of newbies have come to this thread and asked me if I could manage their money or start a 'forex service' where I give a 'buy' or 'sell signal'..or sell them forex trading info. Please don't ask me to do that.. I will not manage anyone's money. I don't have the balls to trade using someone's funds :eek: Also, all my info is right here on the threads.. I don't have any 'secret formula' for the trades that I carry out. You simply have to practice, be quick (quick at trading and analyzing the news)

I couldn't even possibly launch a site where I give real time signals. For one, latency is a big factor. I can't buy or sell my own trades and type 'buy' or 'sell' on the site in a chat window.. trades are to be executed in seconds (more like half a second) so that won't work.

I have been thinking of launching a site where I can hold a conference call of some sorts.. skype maybe? I just say 'buy' or 'sell' and accordingly people trade. It would be entirely free of course, but i have no idea how i can manage that!

Music_Producer

Oct 17, 2006, 08:35 AM

Another trade.. @ 8.30 am EST.. made only 7 pips, but traded huge lots.. so it was all good. Very choppy market.. GBP went down, and then back up a second after i got out.

60041

Music_Producer

Oct 17, 2006, 09:05 AM

5 pips this time, I was a little slow in closing the trade..the US trade balance report @6.00 am EST

60044

smunderdog

Oct 17, 2006, 12:18 PM

Thanks for pointing out where I can more easily see the spreads...

Missed testing a few opportunties this morning, but want to use them as learning experiences. I've been watching the calendar on www.forexfactory.com and they "rate" each data release as having the potential of high, average or low impact. It logically seems to make sense to focus on high impact releases, right?

For instance:

9 AM Canadian interest rate decision. Predicted to stay at 4.25 and it did. Based on what has been discussed on this thread, we would predict the CAD to weaken - and it did.

Attached a screenshot of this - how do I place the image directly in a post so we can see it like MP does?

smunderdog

Oct 17, 2006, 12:27 PM

Another question -

Do you stay away from timeframes where more than one data release is going to take place?

For instance:

At 8:30 AM there was a US PPI and US Core PPI announcement and they seemed to go in opposite directions.

US PPI - forecast was .7%, came out at -1.3%. We would expect the dollar to weaken.

US Core PPI - forecast was .2%, came out at .6%. We might expect the dollar to appreciate in value.

So when these two reports (or any two reports for that matter), come out at the same time, do we typically want to stay away from trading on it?

Music_Producer

Oct 17, 2006, 05:31 PM

Smunder.. yep, it makes more sense to focus on the important releases. but I have seen some reports which .. deviated a lot.. and thus produced a lot of fluctuation in currencies. However, generally I stick to the major reports.

When there are two or more reports.. like the PPI one.. you have to concentrate on the most important one.. in this case, it was the Core PPI.
You also have to watch out for revisions.. if they revise the previous month's report by a big number.. you will see the trade quickly go the opposite way. That's what happened with the US non farm roll and everybody got screwed.. because the USD dropped by 40 pips in one second, and then the next second.. it shot up by 40 pips and gained a lot more. All this, because of a revision (a huge one)

Currencies move based on their interest rates. No one wants to put their money in a country where they don't earn any return on their money (e.g. Japan) So you will see the Yen always lower compared to the USD, GBP, etc. If the US starts reducing rates, the USD will start dropping. It has nothing to do with the state of a country's economy.. how else would you explain the strength of the US dollar? Warren Buffet has been 'short' on the US$ since more than a year.. but he's been proved wrong (either that or he was just lying!)

The USD offers high interest rates, so its still strong. I have a feeling that there is a lot of political pressure by the govts (and OPEC) to keep the Japanese Yen's interest rates very, very low. So these guys can all borrow the Japanese Yen, put it in their banks and earn interest. :rolleyes:

~Shard~

Oct 18, 2006, 11:44 AM

Well, I finally got around to making a trade again! :eek: ;) :D

I know this morning didn't provide the ideal trading conditions, due to the multiple announcements, but I gave it a go anyway and ended up with positive results.

I basically used today as a test on my CMC Markets account. From my practice trades and so forth I confirmed that they never change their spreads, but I still had concerns over their execution speed. Well, my doubts were squashed today – I traded the US CPI and housing news this morning and traded EUR/USD – the spread remained at 2 pips and my order was executed instantly at the exact price I wanted! Due to what happened this morning (anyone watching the charts knows what I mean!) I only made 6 pips, but hey, better than nothing! I didn’t want to take too much risk being it was my first real forex trade on this platform and as I said, I was unsure about order execution speed. As a result, I also used a smaller lot size –next time it will be bigger. :cool:

So yeah, it was a bit risky, since the different reports went in different directions, so to speak, but I still managed to capitalize on it.

And I am very impressed with the CMC platform so far. It’s been great for me for all my CFD share, commodity and index trading, and now I can add forex to the list. Unless this first time was a fluke. :o ;)

And although it only runs on Windows, it actually worked out quite well for me. CMC's charts don’t update every 5 seconds like Oanda, nor does their news ticker report as fast as others, so basically, on my Mac I have Oanda and my news service going, and then on my PC, I have CMC going. Pretty sweet actually. :cool:

Anywho, I don’t have any screenshots, as CMC doesn’t work that way – about all I could post pictures of would be shots of my respective buy and sell orders, but I somehow doubt that would be too riveting to see. ;) :D

Did you trade at all this morning Music_Producer?

Music_Producer

Oct 18, 2006, 09:48 PM

hey Shard, that's terrific! If CMC keeps giving you instant executions.. let us know.. I'll switch for sure.

I did trade this morning but didn't post here, because I was so sleepy, just went off to bed right after. Last 2 days have been crazy trades.. but there's one thing I've noticed for the American session.. if the USD is strong, or there is USD+ve news.. the GBP/EUR will keep dropping for half an hour to one hour. There will be spikes in the middle, but the general direction stays the same.

I made about 18 pips total.. but it was not in one trade. I traded multiple times.. as soon as GBP would spike.. I would sell.. and then buy as it went down. I kept doing that till I finally thought.. 'ok, that's enough for the day' :p

60152

Oh, and my MacBook apparently has the shutdown problem. :mad: It was a good thing it started acting up after I was done with my trades. It seems to shutdown on its own when the power adapter is not plugged in. I don't want to send it for service yet, but ugh.. it wasn't giving me any trouble till now.

I'll be trading the GBP retail sales next, if it deviates quite a bit.

~Shard~

Oct 18, 2006, 11:50 PM

hey Shard, that's terrific! If CMC keeps giving you instant executions.. let us know.. I'll switch for sure.

Will do! I want to execute several more trades though before I'm convinced. ;) And even then, as I said, I wouldn't recommend switching solely to the CMC platform. It is excellent in many ways, however as I indicated, their charts do not update every 5 seconds (5 minutes is the smallest interval which is useless for news traders!) and their news service doesn't appear to be the best. I used Oanda to help with my trade this morning and I wouldn't have had the same results if I had only used CMC.

there's one thing I've noticed for the American session.. if the USD is strong, or there is USD+ve news.. the GBP/EUR will keep dropping for half an hour to one hour. There will be spikes in the middle, but the general direction stays the same.

Good to know, thanks for the head's up - I'll keep an eye on it the next time some +ve USD news is released. :cool:

I'll be trading the GBP retail sales next, if it deviates quite a bit.

I'd like to watch it too however that announcement comes out at about 2:30 AM for me (09:30 GMT, correct?) - past my bedtime on a weekday. ;) :)

Music_Producer

Oct 19, 2006, 04:42 AM

60170

Shard, sometimes it's worth it to stay up for these GBP reports ;) The retail sales came out weaker than expected and their budget had the biggest deficit of all times.. so it was a double whammy..

Made 20 pips on the first spike, and around 6-8 on the 2nd.. the GBP is still dropping.. but I'm done for tonight. I would expect the GBP to continue its downward trend till the American session. There's nothing much going on in the US markets this morning.. but whatever little news could affect the GBP/USD movement.

~Shard~

Oct 19, 2006, 08:28 AM

Shard, sometimes it's worth it to stay up for these GBP reports ;) The retail sales came out weaker than expected and their budget had the biggest deficit of all times.. so it was a double whammy..

Made 20 pips on the first spike, and around 6-8 on the 2nd.. the GBP is still dropping.. but I'm done for tonight. I would expect the GBP to continue its downward trend till the American session. There's nothing much going on in the US markets this morning.. but whatever little news could affect the GBP/USD movement.

Nice trade Music_Producer! Yeah, I can see what you mean. In the future I might just have to set the alarm clock and give it a try! Although I'm not sure if my wife would like that too much... ;) Meh, I'll just tell her I'll be making money as a result, that should make her feel better... :D

What's the next big announcement you've got on your radar screen? CAD CPI tomorrow? The FOMC meeting next Wedneaday?

smunderdog

Oct 19, 2006, 09:23 AM

Yeah, yesteday's announcements were a mess and I would have stayed out since I'm still feeling my way through. This morning's GBP retail sales report was much more clear cut though and I would have probably given it a go if I would have been awake. Of course, I'm still practicing in my game account on Oanda...:)

Problem is, when I logged on this morning and pulled up the Oanda Fx News reports, I don't see where they announced the results of the GBP retail sales report at 4:30 EST. There is a report that the pound is down due to the retail sales coming out lower at 5:09 EST, but of course that doesn't help. :confused:

Since I don't plan on subscribing to a news service initially and there have been favorable reviews of the Oanda news being "quick enough" I had planned on using it for now. What happened on this one?

Am also curious as to which reports I should key into next...

Music_Producer

Oct 20, 2006, 04:44 AM

Shard, just tell your wife you're making some more money so she can go shopping.. she'll be more than happy to stay awake and make you sandwiches at 2 am while you trade :p

GBP trade was quite tepid.. the GDP came out robust.. at 2.8% way better than expected.. but the pound went up by only 15 pips. I grabbed about 8.. which was good considering the lame spike. I'm thinking that the move was limited because the GBP had already risen pre-release..so it was priced in.

Never mind, I just checked the levels and yes, the pound is still rising.. so far a 30 pip rise from the report level. Still, with this kind of news, it should have gone up by 50-70 pips. Of course, there must be a lot of banks selling the pound at the 1.88 level (resistance)

60252

Music_Producer

Oct 20, 2006, 04:55 AM

Just an update.. pound continues to rise.. Shard.. this is a classic example of how the currency trend continues its course.. if the news is positive. This also represents a very good chance to make healthy profits, especially because the spreads fall back to minimal levels.

60253

Music_Producer

Oct 20, 2006, 07:06 AM

Traded the Canadian CPI.. both numbers conflicted each other, but the core cpi is more important.. so canadian $ went up against the USD by 8-10 pips.. I grabbed 5. Had both numbers come out higher, obviously CAD $ would have responded more strongly.

time for me to get some good sleep now.. see you all later in the day :)

60254

Hoef

Oct 20, 2006, 11:38 PM

Hi guys, been quite from my front but back and ready for action! My MB suffers from sudden shutdown too :mad: , all after installing 10.4.8, even though most people say it has nothing to do with it.

Going to trade live from this moment on

~Shard~

Oct 21, 2006, 12:35 AM

Good luck to you Hoef - keep us posted on how it goes! :)

Music_Producer

Oct 21, 2006, 05:34 AM

Yup Hoef.. my shutdowns began after I updated the OS to 10.4.8.. but then again, if people with 10.4.7 have the same problem.. it would have to be a hardware issue. What's annoying is that after all the ipod crap that Apple are so obsessed with, the hardware products seem to have taken a backseat.

I understand that sometimes you could land up with a defective product, but *everyone* I know.. in studios, recording, trading, etc.. who has a macbook.. has this problem. I've been borrowing my wife's Averatec laptop recently for work .. it sounds like an airplane about to take off.. but it doesn't shut down abruptly.

Anyway, I'm going to try and format my hard drive, and reinstall OS X.. hmm.. sounds like something I used to do on my pentium 2 desktop.. a very long time ago :mad:

~Shard~

Oct 23, 2006, 11:59 PM

So which announcements are you focusing on this week Music_Producer? AUD CPI tomorrow evening? FOMC? (I doubt anything will come out of that...) Lots of USD news on Thursday, perhaps too much to trade confidently due to conflicting results? How about the JPY announcements Thurs evening? Just curious what looks good to you this week. :) :cool:

~Shard~

Oct 24, 2006, 09:59 PM

Well, I traded the AUD CPI results about half an hour ago. Consensus was +0.9% and that's exactly what it came out at, however since I was all geared up to trade and was using a smaller lot size, I figured what the heck... ;) So, I made 4 pips on the AUD/USD - not too shabby. I was using this as a bit of an experiment as well to see how the AUD/USD moved versus the AUD/JPY. Looks like the AUD/JPY moved more, but meh, it's all good. :cool:

Music_Producer, I know it's been discussed before here, but what do you think about doing a carry trade on AUD/JPY? Not quite as attractive as it used to be due to Japan raising the interest rate from 0%, but still a nice differential. I thought if I did a smaller lot size (i.e. so I could cover a price swing) but still brig in a few bucks a month there would be nothing wrong with that. Thoughts?

Music_Producer

Oct 25, 2006, 06:30 AM

Shard, I don't think I'll be awake to trade the FOMC report.. but I suggest that you stay alert with those 'buy/sell' windows open. It's expected that they won't change the rates, but if they do.. trade accordingly.

AUD/JPY is perfect for carry trading.. in fact, I got in about 4-5 months ago when AUD/JPY was 83.00. I was making interest daily, and I sold it off after a week at 83.75. I was a little too nervous.. because you never know when the pair can tank.

Anyway, the bloody pair is now at 90.50 or so. I could have made 700+ pips profit.. *plus* made all that interest. :mad: Like I said though, it could have easily gone down by 700 pips as well.

What I suggest is using Oanda's margin call calculator. If you have $50,000 (to throw away.. lol) just invest $5000 of that in AUD/JPY. a 50:1 margin will let you buy $250,000 of AUD/JPY.. so using oanda's calculator.. i get $28 interest per day..or $840 per month. This is compounding interest as well.. so it will add up a little more.

Now using the margin call calculator.. you will not get a margin call till AUD/JPY hits 67.39 (if you buy it now at 90.55) That's quite .. in fact, very far from the level it is at right now. Let's say it takes 2 years to hit 70.. by that time you've made $40320 in interest (more.. with the compounding) and that adds to your balance. So you won't get a margin call at 67.39.. probably much lower like at 45 or so.

What if it tanks to 70 in 6 months? :eek: Then you've barely made $5000 in interest, and you risk losing all your $50,000 on that trade. So I'm a little scared to enter any carry trade right now.. they all look like they're at the edge of a cliff.. ready to fall.

*But* the damn AUD/JPY pair keeps going up. I am pretty sure .. like i explained somewhere.. that all the banks are into this trade.. so it's not like they are all going to dump the AUD and buy the JPY rightaway. JPY is very sensitive to oil prices and all the war crap with NK.. so I don't see JPY gaining strength anytime soon.

Forget AUD/JPY.. you know what the best pair to carry trade is? The GBP/JPY.. can't figure out why.. but it gives you close to 8% :eek: . If you put $250,000 in GBP/JPY you get $55/day or $1650 per month.

Look at the GBP/JPY chart. It's gone up all this year from 200.. right now its at 223 or something.. that's more than 2000 pips. But to buy GBP/JPY you need to pput in more money.. i.e. $250,000 will buy you x units of AUD/JPY.. but it will buy you less than x units of GBP/JPY. Use the calculators.

Let's say I am a multi-millionaire and I put $100,000 in my forex account. I only use $20,000 of that to buy 532932 GBP/JPY. That's $3540 per month in interest. You'll get a margin call if GBP/JPY hits 203.20. Now you see the chart.. and it was at 200 or 203 not too long ago.

Let's say I have $1 million USD in my balance, and I buy 1 million GBP/JPY. I would be making $6660 per month in interest.. and my margin call would hit me when GBP/JPY hit 103. Now it's not going to hit 103.. no chance.. atleast not for a couple of years. Would only happen if the Japanese went crazy on some crack sushi and hiked the interest rate to 6% overnight.. lol.

So use the appropriate amount and allow a lot of room for any dips (major ones as well) to accomodate for any margin calls.

Very tempting.. I know.. but use caution.

Music_Producer

Oct 25, 2006, 06:34 AM

Oops.. to answer the other part of your question.. I'll be trading the US news on thursday.. the durable goods orders report (core being more important) I was thinking of trading existing home sales today but i think it won't affect the market much.. because everyone's going to be waiting for the FOMC.

JPY CPI and stuff.. nah.. it doesn't move much for some reason. I find that the EUr/USD, GBP/USD and USD/CAD move the most on releases such as ppi, cpi, and other stuff. Man i'm telling you.. JPY probably doesn't move because everyone's using it to carry trade :p

~Shard~

Oct 25, 2006, 10:54 AM

Shard, I don't think I'll be awake to trade the FOMC report.. but I suggest that you stay alert with those 'buy/sell' windows open. It's expected that they won't change the rates, but if they do.. trade accordingly.

Unfortunately I’ll be at work myself, but I’ll keep an eye on it for sure – no trading for me today though. :( Unless I play hookie... :D ;) Actually, my wife will be buying a new MacBook when they go C2D so perhaps I’ll be able to borrow it, bring it to work and use it to trade during the day when necessary. My desktop here at work is locked down by our IT group so there’s no way I could load my CMC application on it... :(

Oh, and there is one slight limitation of the CMC platform – if you’re wanting to execute those split-second trades, it’s a little tricky. Basically, you cannot have 2 trade windows open for the same currency pair simultaneously. Now, the trade window itself has a big BUY button and a SELL button, so it’s easy to react to the news, whichever way it goes, however to close out that order you then need to click on the currency pair again, then close the trade. It actually doesn’t take that long, but if you’re essentially wanting to click BUY and SELL within a 2 second period let’s say, you might be hard pressed to do it unless you are very dexterous. ;)

And their charts do not update on 5 second intervals like Oanda, nor is their news service as fast. So, as I said in a previous post, I just have Oanda open on my Mac for those needs, and CMC running on my PC – a great combination!

AUD/JPY is perfect for carry trading.. in fact, I got in about 4-5 months ago when AUD/JPY was 83.00. I was making interest daily, and I sold it off after a week at 83.75. I was a little too nervous.. because you never know when the pair can tank.

Yeah, you always have to remember that you’re leveraged to the gills when dealing in forex and can easily get wiped out if you’re not careful.

Anyway, the bloody pair is now at 90.50 or so. I could have made 700+ pips profit.. *plus* made all that interest. Like I said though, it could have easily gone down by 700 pips as well.

Yeah, exactly – hindsight is 20/20, and as you say, it could easily have gone the other way... :o

What I suggest is using Oanda's margin call calculator. If you have $50,000 (to throw away.. lol) just invest $5000 of that in AUD/JPY. a 50:1 margin will let you buy $250,000 of AUD/JPY.. so using oanda's calculator.. i get $28 interest per day..or $840 per month. This is compounding interest as well.. so it will add up a little more.

Now using the margin call calculator.. you will not get a margin call till AUD/JPY hits 67.39 (if you buy it now at 90.55) That's quite .. in fact, very far from the level it is at right now. Let's say it takes 2 years to hit 70.. by that time you've made $40320 in interest (more.. with the compounding) and that adds to your balance. So you won't get a margin call at 67.39.. probably much lower like at 45 or so.

Cool, thanks for the tip – I’ll check out the margin call calculator and do some number-crunching. My margin for commodities, indices and forex on CMC is a fixed 1% (100:1) so I have to be especially cautious.

What if it tanks to 70 in 6 months? Then you've barely made $5000 in interest, and you risk losing all your $50,000 on that trade. So I'm a little scared to enter any carry trade right now.. they all look like they're at the edge of a cliff.. ready to fall.

Funny you should say that – I put on my Technical Analysis hat last night while doing the AUD trade and noticed the same thing. From a purely technical perspective (which of course only gives you only part of the picture) there are quite a few indicators pointing towards a correction in the AUD/JPY pair - the RSI (Relative Strength Index) is high (indicating overbought levels on the AUD) for instance, so I was thinking along the same lines. I’ll be keeping an eye on it...

Forget AUD/JPY.. you know what the best pair to carry trade is? The GBP/JPY.. can't figure out why.. but it gives you close to 8%. If you put $250,000 in GBP/JPY you get $55/day or $1650 per month.

Really? I thought the UK’s interest rate was lower than Australia’s... Hmm, interesting. Well, I might have to start watching that currency pair as well...

Let's say I am a multi-millionaire and I put $100,000 in my forex account. I only use $20,000 of that to buy 532932 GBP/JPY. That's $3540 per month in interest. You'll get a margin call if GBP/JPY hits 203.20. Now you see the chart.. and it was at 200 or 203 not too long ago.

Let's say I have $1 million USD in my balance, and I buy 1 million GBP/JPY. I would be making $6660 per month in interest.. and my margin call would hit me when GBP/JPY hit 103. Now it's not going to hit 103.. no chance.. atleast not for a couple of years. Would only happen if the Japanese went crazy on some crack sushi and hiked the interest rate to 6% overnight.. lol.

Great examples, thanks. :)

Oops.. to answer the other part of your question.. I'll be trading the US news on thursday.. the durable goods orders report (core being more important) I was thinking of trading existing home sales today but i think it won't affect the market much.. because everyone's going to be waiting for the FOMC.

Makes sense – we’ll see if that is indeed the case.

JPY CPI and stuff.. nah.. it doesn't move much for some reason. I find that the EUr/USD, GBP/USD and USD/CAD move the most on releases such as ppi, cpi, and other stuff. Man i'm telling you.. JPY probably doesn't move because everyone's using it to carry trade :p

Haha, fair enough. I was just thinking about those specific announcements since they’re not going to be announced at some god awful time like 3 AM. ;) A trade at 5:30 PM my time (or whenever the exact time is) is much easier for me to carry out. :)

Thanks again...

jwilkinson317

Oct 25, 2006, 02:01 PM

I am new to post here, but have been reading the forum for the past few months. I have some free time during the day now and am trying to jump into this forex stuff. Since i opened my demo acct up a few months back, i am up about 15K, but would like to see alot more consistent success.

I am learning about fundamental analysis currently, so is anyone else trading the 2:15 announcement? if so what pair would be best to trade?

~Shard~

Oct 25, 2006, 08:58 PM

I am new to post here, but have been reading the forum for the past few months. I have some free time during the day now and am trying to jump into this forex stuff.

Welcome to our little Forex Club! ;) I hope our discussions so far have been beneficial for you. :)

Since i opened my demo acct up a few months back, i am up about 15K, but would like to see alot more consistent success.

No offense, but have you honestly been treating your demo account as real money? Honestly? If so, that's excellent, but as has been mentioned many times in this thread, people who are a bit more lax when it comes to game accounts tend to get burned when it comes to real money, so please keep that in mind. Just friendly advice, that's all, I just don't want to see you end up in a world of hurt. :) And if you are being very cautious, doing your research, and not just blindly trading pairs for fun ;) then again, that's excellent. Just ask yourself before your pretend trades, "Would I be executing this trade so freely if this was my real money?" :cool:

I am learning about fundamental analysis currently, so is anyone else trading the 2:15 announcement? if so what pair would be best to trade?

The best pair to trade when it comes to the USD is the EUR/USD pair for the most part, although not always. Depending on the platform you use, the spreads are usually fairly tight on that pair, and it moves a fair bit when there is news.

Any other questions, just post them here!

~Shard~

Oct 25, 2006, 09:14 PM

So Music_Producer, any thoughts on how the Durable Goods report will swing tomorrow? I'll be up and ready to trade if the opportunity is there... :cool:

Music_Producer

Oct 26, 2006, 05:08 AM

Hey jwilikson..welcome to our little thread! :)

Everything Shard stated.. is exactly what I would have said. Dealing with demo accounts is very different than dealing with real money. You get a little anxious even when you see a loss as little as 32 cents.. and then it goes to 42 cents.. and then you can't wait anymore and just close your position.

When you know its 'fake' money.. you have the luxury of holding on to your position for as long as you want.. till the currency level comes back up again and you exit with a profit. The stress factor when trading live is huge.. of course with experience you get used to it, but it never gets to the point that it's boring (atleast not for me)

Shard, I have no clue what today's report will be like.. forecast is 1.0% .. maybe will be more..because of slumping gas prices. The EUR/USD has been rising since the last 2 days.. so if the report does come out positive (and hopefully a solid deviation) then the EUR will probably drop 80 pips or so.. simply because of the recent momentum.

My logic tells me the report will be good.. but that damn gut feeling again.. 1% of me says it will be a bad report. Lol.. so much for my thoughts :rolleyes: Whatever direction the currencies go.. we'll be ready..hehe.. good luck!

PS - since the euro's risen so much anyway.. if the durable goods report does come out negative.. I would expect a spike (upwards) in the EUR/USD.. but for a very short time. It would reverse pretty quickly.. atleast that's what I have observed when a currency has already moved by quite a few pips since a couple of days.

Music_Producer

Oct 26, 2006, 09:01 AM

~Shard~

Oct 26, 2006, 10:14 AM

Well, like I said.. since it was a bad report (Core Durable goods came out at 0.1% compared to 1.0%) the GBP/USD spiked up.. but for a very short time (because gbp/usd had already gone up quite a bit since the last 2 days) It came back down almost as quickly, and then gradually went upwards.

The Durable goods orders came out better than expected though - at 7.8%.. so that could also explain why the USD tried to spike up.. but obviously core number is more important. Was a pretty lackluster trade.. made about 4 pips (on a damn 10 pip spread)

How was your trade Shard? Did cmc execute?

CMC didn't execute because Shard didn't execute. ;)

I was actually watching the EUR/USD, not the GBP/USD, although the results, as you described above, were pretty much the same. EUR/USD spiked down about 7 pips initially (on poor news :confused: ), then back to parity, then up 7 pips and that was about it. (There was a gradual gain afterwards, but I wasn't going to eb trading that...) So, I was watching intently with my cursor between the BUY and SEL button, but didn't see enough of a spike when the news came through to warrant a trade (IMO), even with the fixed 2 pip spread. Glad you made a bit on it though! I just didn't think it was worth my time when I saw the results. All the combinations of what you described above made me think it wasn't going to move much, and it didn't. Well, either that or I'm simply not quick enough yet. :o ;)

So what made you trade the GBP/USD over the EUR/USD? Just curious... Does that pair traditionally react more than EUR/USD in situations like this?

Also, what do you think about the US reports tomorrow AM? I've heard that they may come out lower than consensus. So, does that mean (if that is indeed the case) the USD will go down on tomorrrw's news? Or, does it mean that since people are expecting it to be lower, the EUR, GBP, etc. will strengthen today in anticipation, and then if the news is bad, not much will happen? I'm interested to hear your thoughts, as I'll be trying to trade that one as well. :cool:

Lastly, more of a fundamental question. The rumor is that Australia might hike its interest rate in November. This would therefore make AUD more attractive to people to buy, correct? In other words, they would get more interest from holding AUD, so the AUD would rise on an interest rate increase? Or do I have it wrong? It's still early in the morning here, so forgive me if I'm out to lunch... :o ;)

And why again is GBP/JPY a better carry trade than AUD/JPY? The numbers don't add up for me on that one....

Crimson

Oct 26, 2006, 04:12 PM

Hi everyone - I've been gone for so long I've lost track of where I left off. Just curious though, has anyone here used Forex.com and FXCM.com? Any feedback? I'm now using both PC and Mac so the options have multiplied!

Also, as far as the charting program, are you guys using the Oanda charts only? I was looking into the eSignal charts, but was surprised to see their prices - about $140/mo. I just find Oanda's charts a bit clumsy, but that would be the same for forex.com - have not looked at the fxcm.com charts yet. OK... I admit it, I'm a designer and a VERY visual person and likes pretty, and easy to read visuals :p

Hope everyone has done well... once I get a chance I'll read the entire thread again!

Crimson

~Shard~

Oct 26, 2006, 05:51 PM

Also, as far as the charting program, are you guys using the Oanda charts only? I was looking into the eSignal charts, but was surprised to see their prices - about $140/mo. I just find Oanda's charts a bit clumsy, but that would be the same for forex.com - have not looked at the fxcm.com charts yet. OK... I admit it, I'm a designer and a VERY visual person and likes pretty, and easy to read visuals :p

I now use CMC coupled with Oanda. CMC does not give me real-time charting down to a 5-second granularity like Oanda, so I use Oanda for the real-time visuals I require. ;) As for charting in general though (and perhaps this is just of interest to me) CMC's charting is better than anything I've seen - better than eSignal and QCharts, both of which you have to pay for. (Keep in mind I trade stocks, bonds, ETFs, indices, commodities, etc.) The amount of flexibility their charting provides is amazing, in terms of plotting trend lines, viewing and combining technical analysis, setting alerts - it's very comprehensive and I'm quite impressed. Best of all, it's included, for free, as part of the platform! :cool: As I said above, really the only thing it's missing out on is the real-time charting down to the second such as Oanda provides.

Crimson

Oct 26, 2006, 06:18 PM

Thanks Shard! Just curious, do you have to have a live account with CMC to use their charts? The way I understood it was that they only give you a 14 day trial account. Thanks again!!

The Mad Kiwi

Oct 26, 2006, 08:40 PM

This is possibly the most informative threads I've read in a long time, thank's guys. I admit I only read the first 10 million posts, and then skipped a few pages to the end. :D

Anyone know a good platform in Australia? Preferably that they've dealt with and been able to profit take without any problems?

Not that I'm really likely to start trading currency, those gearing ratios scare the hell out of me!

The rumor is that Australia might hike its interest rate in November. This would therefore make AUD more attractive to people to buy, correct? In other words, they would get more interest from holding AUD, so the AUD would rise on an interest rate increase? Or do I have it wrong? It's still early in the morning here, so forgive me if I'm out to lunch... :o ;)

Australian interest rate is 100% guaranteed to rise in November, inflation is out of the Reserve Bank's target band and more importantly, there's a new Reserve Bank Governor, it's only his second meeting, the market expects the rise and he'll want to be seem to be tough on inflation. If it didn't rise all hell would break loose on the markets on all fronts.

I'm not happy about it either, my money is invested off shore at the moment and the bloody rising AUD is eating all my profits.

~Shard~

Oct 26, 2006, 10:15 PM

Thanks Shard! Just curious, do you have to have a live account with CMC to use their charts? The way I understood it was that they only give you a 14 day trial account. Thanks again!!

Nope, you should be able to use the charts on the 14-day demo account as well. Oh, and if you want that time period extended, you can just phone their support line and they'll do it if you ask nicely. ;)

Now that being said, I never played around will the charting to its fullest capacity when I had my demo account, so I'm not sure if certain features are only available on the live platform or not. All I can tell you is that the charting on the live platform is sweet IMO. Although I suppose you have to be into charting, technical analysis and "know what is good" so to speak to fully appreciate it. If a person has never really used charts before they probably wouldn't think it's anything special. ;)

~Shard~

Oct 26, 2006, 10:19 PM

This is possibly the most informative threads I've read in a long time, thank's guys. I admit I only read the first 10 million posts, and then skipped a few pages to the end. :D

Glad you found it useful. Hopefully you'll stick around - and if you have any questions, just ask. :)

Anyone know a good platform in Australia? Preferably that they've dealt with and been able to profit take without any problems?

Not that I'm really likely to start trading currency, those gearing ratios scare the hell out of me!

Sorry mate, I honestly don't know about trading in Oz. It was a little tricky as it was finding a good platform in Canada which wasn't in US funds, etc. :o

Australian interest rate is 100% guaranteed to rise in November, inflation is out of the Reserve Bank's target band and more importantly, there's a new Reserve Bank Governor, it's only his second meeting, the market expects the rise and he'll want to be seem to be tough on inflation. If it didn't rise all hell would break loose on the markets on all fronts.

Thanks for the info, I appreciate it. I'll definitely be trading that announcement! Although I suppose if it's a foregone conclusion that it will rise, then as long as those expectations are met, the currency may not move much... ;)

njmac

Oct 26, 2006, 10:29 PM

~Shard~

Oct 26, 2006, 10:31 PM

With 565 posts, this thread is packed with information! I have been taking notes from here into Word... so when I get a chance I will post a summary for those who are kind of new to the thread and overwhelmed.

I will be trading next week, finally! Thanks to everyone for keeping the info coming. :)

Thanks in advance for the summary njmac, that would be excellent for any newcomers. Please let us know if you need any assistance with it. :cool:

Music_Producer

Oct 26, 2006, 10:43 PM

~Shard~

Oct 26, 2006, 10:56 PM

Yup - Shard and Mad Kiwi (aren't all you kiwis mad anyway :p ) Aussie $ is expected to go up.. and this is the buzz everywhere. It seems like the perfect pair to carry trade - AUD/JPY. Could the AUD/JPY break 99+ barrier? Possibly..I just purchased 100,000 units of AUD/JPY today..will hold on to it, and earn some interest.

Thanks Music_Producer. I think I might try doing just 50,000 for now (being my first time and all doing a trade longer than a few seconds.... ;)) and that will make me feel good about the margin situation as well. With my 100:1 margin, it'll work out to about 4.5M yen, or $42K CAD, so my actual outlay is only $400. Being I have several thousand in my account, I feel comfortable with this situation with respect to margin. I trust I am right in my thinking? ;)

I they do raise the AUD interest rates, oh boy.. I think everyone and his dog will buy AUD to live off the fat interest. :)

Yep - I'll buy more. I might buy some just before the announcement as well and not even wait for the news! :eek: ;)

I'll be trading one report tomorrow.. the US GDP. If it falls, besides that being bad news for the USD.. it will also signal to the Feds to cut rates in the future.. so that the economy can get stronger (inflation is under control, or so they say for now)

I'll be keeping an eye on it as well. So, just as we discussed with the AUD situation, if the US cuts rates, people will start bailing out of the USD, correct? Hmm, and I might just have to buy some Gold as well then - it has an inverse relationship to the USD. I'l check out the November contract as well as the spot XAUUSD right now... :cool:

To answer your question Shard.. I prefer trading the GBP/USD because it moves more than the EUR/USD does.. and the spread on GBP/USD is 10.. whereas on EUR/USD it goes to 15 (most of the time)

Cool, good to know. On CMC the GBP/USD spread is 3 pips as opposed to the EUR/USD which is 2 pips, so not a huge difference. I'll watch both pairs tomorrow and see what happens.

Last question - is the US GDP expected to drop? In other words, will a drop of what is expected not necessarily be bad for the USD? Or will any falling GDP be bad?

Music_Producer

Oct 27, 2006, 04:34 AM

Shard, if the US interest rates are cut.. then yes, the USD will go down.. but not by much. Remember, that its a 'safe haven' in times of war, energy crisis, etc. The USD will still offer higher yields compared to other currencies.. I mean, would you want to put all your money in a Japanese bank and make no interest?

However, there is a limit to which a currency will go to.. if people keep selling JPY.. at some point, the Bank of Japan will intervene and buy a huge amount (billions) of Yen to halt the drop. So a lot of money is at stake for banks ..which is why you usually see a drop or hike in currency levels limited to about 80-100 pips after a deviated report. Let's say USD GDP comes out absolute crap.. like -4%. Sure, EUR/USD will shoot up by 60-80 pips.. but it won't break that barrier (usually) There are a lot of stop losses set around that area.. and then banks start buying the USD like mad men.. so that they don't lose their initial trades. That's where you start seeing all the spikes going up and down.. and you wonder 'what the hell?'

I do expect the GDP to be on the lower side.. but the markets expect that anyway. The question is, how much will the deviation be? If it's as expected (2.9%) then there will be a drop of maybe 10 pips or so.. nothing great. If the GDP is -1% or some crazy number.. then the drop will be bigger.. like 40-60 pips easily.

Gold, for some reason, behaved strangely during the NK and the high oil price scenario.. didn't it? People were more interested in buying USD than gold. Usually gold and CHF are safe havens .. so it was a bit puzzling.

Music_Producer

Oct 27, 2006, 08:39 AM

Darn.. why do I always exit so fast? :mad: Made 12 pips on today's GDP trade.. horrible reports for USD.. could have made 40 pips.. bah!! Anyway, made enough to buy a mbp :)

60724

The second pic is where the GBP hiked up after I exited.. (*complains*)

60725

Music_Producer

Oct 27, 2006, 09:59 AM

Shard, one of the possible hazards of carry trading.. look at the GBP/JPY today. It dropped 140 pips in less than 20 minutes :eek: :eek: and no god damn reason!

60730

~Shard~

Oct 27, 2006, 10:08 AM

Nice trade Muisic_Producer! I, on the other hand, learned a valuable lesson. I've learned this lesson before when trading stocks, commodities, etc., but this forex thing is still rather new to me, so I guess it's to be expected. :o ;)

Basically, I was slow on the gun. Saw the report, saw that it was lower, but it took me a brief second to register how low it was. In that time, I saw GBP/USD spike up big time - the trade where you made your pips. So, in the heat of the moment, I committed one of my "cardinal sins" - something I always avoid - I deviated from my strategy. This is something I have taught myself over the years never to do. Sure, you have to learn to react, improvise, etc. at times, but, well, you know what I mean... ;)

Instead of trading on the news (the facts) I traded on speculation (bad bad bad!) and SOLD GBP/USD hoping for a bit of a recovery after such a spike. Now, I quickly realized the error in my ways, and since I was only trading 50,000 it wasn't a huge deal (only lost $200) but still, I ended up losing money when I should have ended up making money. :o

It honestly doesn't bother me though. I'm still new to the "forex world" and sometimes you need a good lesson like this to help ground you and give you perspective. As long as you learn from your mistakes, it's okay to make them. As I've said before to many people, if something is worth doing, then it's worth doing wrong intially. ;) :cool: I'd honestly rather have this happen then always be a winner and get careless and over-confident as a result.

So yeah, down $200? Honestly, that's nothing for me. And thanks to being cautious in using a lower lot size and level-headed afterwards (i.e. not wanting to revenge trade, etc.), I mitigated my loss quite nicely I'd like to think.

Just wanted to share my story with everyone for what it's worth. But now I'm more interested in what the next big announcement is as you see it Music_Producer. What do you figure? Time to make up my loss. :)

~Shard~

Oct 27, 2006, 10:11 AM

Shard, one of the possible hazards of carry trading.. look at the GBP/JPY today. It dropped 140 pips in less than 20 minutes :eek: :eek: and no god damn reason!

Yikes! Yeah, I had a stop loss on my AUD/JPY which I bought last night and I got stopped out this morning as well - luckily with 10 pips profit from when I bought it though. :) So much for using it as a long-term trade... ;) The only thing I can think of is that Japan's CPI (I believe it was) inched higher than expected, but you wouldn't think it would move things that much.

Ah well, I'll check things out again tonight and might enter back into AUD/JPY, we'll see... I'd like to get at least one day's interest on the sucker... :D

Music_Producer

Oct 27, 2006, 10:28 AM

$200 is nothing.. imagine if you had lost much more! I've done that too.. stupid trades, emotional trading.. crazy stuff. I have to hold myself back at times.

Btw, I took a risk and bought GBP/JPY when it went down 150 pips. Figured it would rise a little.. and it did.. so made about 25 pips and got out. My AUD/JPY is still open.. somehow that hasn't taken a hit compared to GBP/JPY.

Music_Producer

Oct 27, 2006, 10:49 AM

60735

Here;s the GBP/JPY trade.. it's still rising.. could have made 50+pips..easy.. but 25 is good enough. The GBP is pretty strong and it should be back up to its regular levels. AUD/JPY is also coming up..at 90.38 now :)

~Shard~

Oct 27, 2006, 10:51 AM

$200 is nothing.. imagine if you had lost much more! I've done that too.. stupid trades, emotional trading.. crazy stuff. I have to hold myself back at times.

Oh I know it's nothing. I was leaning towards not even mentioning it, but then I thought I would in the interest of others here benefiting from my experience, being a person who has "been there, done that" before, in my early days of trading. I've been down thousands on trades before (luckily not that often!) so I'd like to think I have ice water in my veins for the most part - this doesn't affect me in the least. ;) :)

But yah, funny how easy it is to cave into emotional responses. You really have to be disciplined with this stuff - there's another good lesson. :cool:

Btw, I took a risk and bought GBP/JPY when it went down 150 pips. Figured it would rise a little.. and it did.. so made about 25 pips and got out. My AUD/JPY is still open.. somehow that hasn't taken a hit compared to GBP/JPY.

Nice one. Yeah, I bought into AUD/JPY last night around 90.54 (?) and had a conditional stop in at 90.74 (i.e. if AUD/JPY passed that point by x%, activate the stop to preserve profits.) This morning I was actually up even more on it, but then it started decreasing a fair bit. As I said, I'll check in again tonight and maybe attempt a carry trade again (this time longer than 8 hours ;)). Just a guess, but I'm thinking that holding a currency like that over the weekend is usually a fairly safe bet, since it doesn't move much on the weekends due to lack of news/activity? Yes, no?

Hoef

Oct 27, 2006, 08:59 PM

Music_Producer

Oct 30, 2006, 09:21 PM

Hoef.. my macbook works great after the update.. no shut downs.. and its absolutely quiet. :)

Went out during the weekend to San Diego - the Wild Animal Park.. Shard, I still have my AUD/JPY position open :D .. earning some nice interest on it, and those pips that I made on the GBP/JPY trade actually balanced me out pretty well.. so if I sell AUD/JPY at 90.20.. I won't go in a loss. I'd rather wait a bit though.

~Shard~

Oct 30, 2006, 11:16 PM

Shard, I still have my AUD/JPY position open :D .. earning some nice interest on it, and those pips that I made on the GBP/JPY trade actually balanced me out pretty well.. so if I sell AUD/JPY at 90.20.. I won't go in a loss. I'd rather wait a bit though.

Nice one. Yeah, it's interesting to see how the currencies move when you're actually holding them for longer than 6 seconds... ;) I think I'll pop back into AUD/JPY myself in the next day or two and just let it ride. I'll have enough cash in my margin account to cover a dip of over 2 cents technically, so I should be fine...

Also looking at picking up some XAU/USD (Spot Gold against the USD). Gold has a period of seasonal strength right now on its own (Indian jewelers stocking up for wedding season, other jewelers for Xmas season, many other factors too...) but coupled with the fact that it has an inverse relationship to the USD, I like this cross-pair and am going to give it a try... :cool:

Music_Producer

Oct 31, 2006, 01:10 PM

~Shard~

Oct 31, 2006, 05:20 PM

Hey Shard.. very interesting stuff about Gold.. :)

AUD/JPY is back at 90.57.. GBP/JPY is still at a low level though. I think it was just GBP/JPY that was overbought.. I don't think AUD will go down until that interest rate decision anyway.

I'll keep you posted on the Gold front - it's getting ripe for the picking... Other nice thing is, with CMC, they do not charge any financing (overnight interest) on commodity positions - it's technically built into the spread. As a result, I don't have to worry about paying 6% interest (or whatever god-awful amount) on tens of thousands of borrowed dollars every day on my commodity trades - that tends to erode profits fairly quickly... ;)

I bought AUD/JPY this morning before work @ 90.66. I promise to actually hold it longer than a day this time and actually collect interest for a change on it. :o ;) Plus, I only picked up $50,000 for now. That way if it goes down significantly for whatever reason, I can DCA down since I'm confident in its relative long-term performance - as well as the whole carry trade interest thing of course. :)

~Shard~

Oct 31, 2006, 10:31 PM

Music_Producer, could you help explain this little nuance to carry trading for me? Since I haven't done this before, I'm not sure if this is standard practice, or something specific to how CMC handles things...

Basically, my AUD/JPY position was just rolled over. Perhaps I'm not reading my client position summary correctly, but the way it is represented at least, it appears as though CMC executed a rollover trade on my behalf. My position was closed out at 90.47 for a loss of $90 (I owned 50,000 @ 90.66 at the time) and then 50,000 was subsequently bought @ 90.4264 for me (essentially giving me a 4 pip bonus. ;) ) (And I am currently up about 15 pips on it = $75)

So, is this just how they do it every day, and if so do I need to track my position every day to make sure I know exactly how much I'm up/down? (i.e. down $90 today, up $60 tomorrow, down $10 the next day, etc.)

And how would the interest payment work on this? When would it be realized in my account? I'm assuming as a simple CR? Or is it built into that 4 pip differential between my rollover orders? Let's see, 50,000 * 6% / 365 = $8.22. Hmm, nope, that doesn't equal 4 pips x 50,000, which is what a day's interest should be... :confused:

Sorry, just thinking out loud here, perhaps I'm missing something simple. :o ;) Any ideas? I'm familiar with commodity contracts rolling over upon expiry, but those always last a full month, not just a day! And for what it's worth, my "new" position has a "value date" of November 6th... hmm...

Just want to make sure I fully understand exactly what is going on and how things are handled. I always pride myself on being educated when it comes to matters like this, and don't like being unsure, as I'm sure you can appreciate. Any insight would be most appreciated. :cool:

~Shard~

Oct 31, 2006, 11:08 PM

Further to the above, I realize something funky may have been going on since it it the end of the month and all, but I'm still curious about the specifics. I guess I'm just not used to closing out trades like that automatically, unless it's a commodity trade near the expiry date. For common shares for instance, I have been several thousand dollars down on stocks before, but it's all been on paper, and I've in many cases simply held on and realized a much smaller loss or even a gain - it would stress me out if those positions were actually closed at a huge loss when my intent was to hold it long term, and my capital gain/loss was therefore realized on a regular basis like that! ;)

I guess in my mind I thought this carry trade would act just like owning a stock. I own some currency, and whether it's for 10 seconds or 10 days, whether it's up or down, I could just sit back, collect interest and sell it to realize a capital gain/loss when I so choose. :cool:

Lastly, so you don't get the wrong idea, I'm not ticked off by this in the least - just confused and a bit cautious as a result until I fully understand the specifics. But enough babbling from me on this topic for now... :o ;) :cool:

Hoef

Nov 1, 2006, 08:15 AM

~Shard~

Nov 1, 2006, 09:28 AM

Interesting issue you have ~shard~. On OANDA, nothing like this happens, though I don't think I can hold any pair longer for a week (but that is a user preference).

Did it pay out interest when it "rolled over"?

The only thing I can think of is that it has something to with the end of the month, but even that's a bit odd to me...

As for the interest, I'll check tonight when I get home after work, it should show up by then. Not sure if it's calculated based on midnight of my time zone, CMC's main time zone, or GMT, not that it really matters.

Oh, and the position was definitely rolled over. I now show a $90DR and a "new" position @ 90.43. Doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things, but still. I might have to phone CMC for further clarification as well.

Music_Producer

Nov 1, 2006, 08:10 PM

~Shard~

Nov 1, 2006, 10:11 PM

Shard, that's a little odd :confused: I've held a carry trade position with Oanda for 2 months, and my position was never closed. So I don't think it would be a end-of-the-month thing.

I've had one position at GFT for 2 weeks.. but no position was closed.

I don't know how CMC operates though.. maybe they have some specific rule regarding carry trades. Also, regarding the interest rates.. not everybody pays daily interest or in fact, the same interest either! Out of all the forex brokers, I found Oanda to be the best for carry trading.. because they pay interest daily.

You might want to check with CMC as to what really happened.

Yeah, it looks like the close out positions every once and a while and open a new position based on the differential of the interest rates. Regardless, I don't like realizing capital gains/losses until I choose to! ;) I'm phoning them tomorrow to clarify. I'll still continue to trade with them, but this might just affect my strategy a bit, that's all. :)

~Shard~

Nov 1, 2006, 10:26 PM

So are you planning on trading any of the US news either tomorrow morning or Friday morning? If so, which announcements are you watching for and what are your predictions?

Music_Producer

Nov 2, 2006, 02:41 AM

Tomorrow morning there's nothing but the EUR interest rate statement. Its expected to remain unchanged at 3.25%.. so I'll just be watching. If they hike/lower the rate.. obviously I'll trade.

Friday morning is Canadian employment change and the US Non Farm employment change.. you know the 'non farm' stuff creates a lot of excitement.. lol. Absolutely no predictions on that one :p It jumps around quite a bit!

~Shard~

Nov 2, 2006, 07:38 AM

Sounds good - I'll be taking a break today, but will be watching tomorrow with my mouse-clicking finger at the ready... ;) :cool:

Music_Producer

Nov 3, 2006, 04:37 AM

Well I just traded the UK Services PMI (GBP/USD) for only 3 pips.. I was a little late entering the trade (I think a little Black Label that I drank an hour earlier might have affected my reflexes!) Weird.. i can't seem to attach the screenshot.. it gives me a 'You do not have permission to access this feature' or something like that. I'll try attaching the pic later.

Next trade is the CAD employment and USD non farm.

Music_Producer

Nov 3, 2006, 07:05 AM

21 pips on the USD/CAD pair.. traded the CAD employment change report. Last one to trade is the USD non-farm.. hope i can stay awake till then!

61295

The second image is the GBP/USD pair I traded earlier

~Shard~

Nov 3, 2006, 07:08 AM

Ideal trade for me, this is pretty much how I'd like it to happen every time! :)

Although Oanda's news service didn't report the CAD #s I saw the USD/CAD spike down so I sold. Sold at 1.1297, bought at 1.1308 and make a nice 11 pips in less than 30 seconds! I got in a little late, technically, but without a news flash to support the move, I wanted to confirm the downtrend before I sold.

Did you manage to do a trade as well Music_Producer?

Edit: I see you beat me to it! Nice trade! Yes, I still don't have your speed yet to capture as many pips as you, but I'm working on it - all in good time... ;) :cool:

Music_Producer

Nov 3, 2006, 08:05 AM

Yup Shard, I wish all trades were like this! Well most of them are :)

If you're trading the non farm report.. I would caution you to use a smaller lot.. because of the darn revisions that are always whack. The last time, the revision deviated by a huge number.. so you saw those whipsaws in the eur/usd. I'm trading with a small lot, it's not worth taking a risk when you know there's going to be some volatility ahead!

Music_Producer

Nov 3, 2006, 08:40 AM

Holy cow! That was one heck of a crazy trade.. looks like neither Oanda nor MB Trading could handle this one. Both platforms froze approx. a few seconds after the spike. I made about 8 pips.. could have made more but i just cant login! Is CMC functioning well Shard?

Music_Producer

Nov 3, 2006, 08:43 AM

Man this is the last time I trade the NFP. It's a good thing I closed all my trades before the platforms crashed. I still can't sign in! Unbelievable.. I feel for those who are still stuck :eek:

GBP/USD and EUR/USD are still moving like crazy.. whipsaw all over the place.. sheesh!

Edit: - Its the stupid a$$ revisions again. Aug numbers were revised from +51K to +238 K!!!! WTF??

Makes you wonder what kind of calculators these so called economists who work for the government use! How can they be so off??

~Shard~

Nov 3, 2006, 11:44 AM

Sounds like you had a wild ride Music_Producer!

CMC did indeed execute just fine for me. I saw the reports and spike in the EUR/USD (decided to do this pair instead of GBP/USD this time around) and sold. Moments later I closed my position and ended up making 20 pips, my largest gain to date! :D CMC executed flawlessly, kept the 2 pip spread - it was all good.

And thanks for the head's up on using a smaller lot size. Although the way it worked out I could have made more, I could easily have lost more as well due to the volitility. ;) As it turns out, I still made a decent profit so it's all fine by me. :cool:

Music_Producer

Nov 3, 2006, 03:34 PM

~Shard~

Nov 3, 2006, 04:15 PM

That's awesome Shard! CMC is looking more and more tempting to me now :D Yeah.. I made a profit.. but heck, this was a 100 pip drop.. so to make 8 pips on that because of platform issues is absolutely unacceptable to me. I was able to log back in after an HOUR! :rolleyes:

Yikes - imagine all the people who got kicked out of their account with open trades! :eek: That could amount to some serious losses... :(

CMC is by no means perfect - just read some of my previous posts on the differences/deficiencies between it and Oanda - but nothing is perfect at the end of the day. For me, the Oanda/CMC combo is working fine though. Oanda for the news and real-time 5-second charts and CMC for the actual trade execution, fixed spreads and 100:1 leverage.

You could always just give it a try if you like - they have a 14-day trial and it's all free. Also, I have all the documentation on the software platform, FX trading, etc. and would be willing to e-mail it to you if you would like to read through it to get a better idea of things. Just PM me if you want. :)

Also, keep in mind that I use CMC for other trading as well - as a forex platform itself, it may not be the best for you, but for me, it's a great all-around platform. Also, since I'm just getting started and am not at the "level" you are with repsect to quickness, efficiency, etc., perhaps CMC is good enough for me but would not be able to keep up with you. :o ;) One way to find out though I guess...

You made a lot of pips today.. time to celebrate :p

Guess that means I need ot have a pip party. :D

Yeah, the full 100 would have been nice, but I'll take 20 any day! As I've stated before, I still consider myself new to forex trading, and want to err on the side of caution. Come 2007 though I think I will start using larger lot sizes and so forth. For right now though, a couple hundred bucks here and there is quite fine by me!

PS - Did you see AUD/JPY? It's gone up to 90.81 and above.

Yes, unfortunately I am not carry trading it at the moment - I closed my position a day ago due to that rollover issue I was having. I wanted to be completely out of everything until I fully understood how they worked things. Now that I understand rollovers, Value Dates, Mark to Market and so forth, I know how they handle things and will enter back in this weekend most likely - Monday at the latest. Even if there is a slight sell-off due to the AUD's recent rise, I think long term it can only go higher. And with interest rate hikes looming, it makes sense to me... :cool:

~Shard~

Nov 3, 2006, 08:45 PM

Quick question for you Music_Producer. I thought that the forex markets were open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. However it appears as though (at least from Oanda's real time charts) there is no activity/movement on the AUD/JPY pair at all for the weekend and previous weekends as well. Is there no trading for the next day or so, or could I still buy right now if I wanted to? I didn't think the forex markets closed at any time...

Music_Producer

Nov 4, 2006, 04:53 AM

~Shard~

Nov 4, 2006, 11:30 AM

Shard, the markets *are* open 24 hours/ 7 days a week.. but from Friday 2 pm PST (somewhere near there) to Sunday 2 pm PST.. the spreads widen to 10-20 pips.. because the banks/govt. agencies are closed.. and they are the ones who do major trades. So you won't see any spikes or anything of that sort.. however you can buy/sell.. but it makes no sense opening a new position as you'll be hit by a 10-20 pip spread rightaway.

Thanks for the clarification Music_Producer. As I mentioned above, I had closed out my AUD/JPY position until I had sorted out how CMC was handling things and now I am eager to get back in. ;) Hmm, I should fire up CMC and see if they still have their 4 pip spread on the pair or if they widen it as well...

So what catches your eye this week for announcements? I'll be watching the CAD housing starts Wednesday and the AUD employment #s on Thursday for sure along with all the USD news... :cool:

Hoef

Nov 4, 2006, 02:29 PM

Thanks for the clarification Music_Producer. As I mentioned above, I had closed out my AUD/JPY position until I had sorted out how CMC was handling things and now I am eager to get back in. ;) Hmm, I should fire up CMC and see if they still have their 4 pip spread on the pair or if they widen it as well...

Just noted that OANDA pays out interest daily ... I never hold on that long so it's the first time I see it.

~Shard~

Nov 4, 2006, 03:10 PM

Just noted that OANDA pays out interest daily ... I never hold on that long so it's the first time I see it.

Yep, it sure does. My CMC pays you interest on a daily basis as well, however for whatever reason they don't actually pay you/deposit it in your account until the end of the month. <shrug>

Music_Producer

Nov 5, 2006, 05:33 AM

~Shard~

Nov 5, 2006, 01:58 PM

Shard, that's not being paid interest on a daily basis.. if it gets deposited at the end of the month. Your balances are not updated daily.. only monthly. Same as a bank.. you could have a savings account @ 5% but interest is deposited monthly.. whereas Oanda pays you daily. I think that's the best feature about Oanda.

Ah, I see what you mean. I guess what I was meaning was that it's not like I have to hold something for a month for them to pay me interest on it. If I hold it for 2 days, then I get paid 2 days' worth of interest and instead of it being deposited immediately, it's deposited all together at the end of the month - that's what I was meaning I guess. ;)

Also, just posting some info I got from the CMC markets web site (but then you already know this :) ) which explains your AUD/JPY trade (why it was closed and re-opened)

'How is Financing Charged and Calculated?

At (17:00) 5:00pm EST (Standard FX market Value-Date change time) each day CMC Markets will settle all Spot positions by closing the trade at the current market rate and re-opening it for the following day’s Spot date at a rate that will reflect the interest rate differential.'

Yeah, thanks for that - I did find that little bit of info on their website eventually, but it would have been good to know ahead of time as well. Guess I missed it the first time around. :o ;) I had their Trading Desk sort me out on it as well, so it's all good now. Lessoned learned for next time. :cool:

Music_Producer

Nov 6, 2006, 04:35 AM

Just traded the GBP report.. 6 pips.. simple trade and quite boring.

61495

~Shard~

Nov 6, 2006, 10:09 PM

So what are your thoughts Music_Prodcuer on the AUD rate announcement tomorrow? Consensus is that they will raise rates, which should in theory cause the AUD to rise, however is it possible that traders have already factored in this rate hike into the currency? As a result, if the hike is announced as expected, could the AUD actually go down a little?

Regardless, if they do not raise rates, the AUD will go down, and if they lower rates (will NOT happen) the AUD would absolutely tank. Do I have it right? ;) :)

Hoef

Nov 7, 2006, 12:15 AM

~Shard~

Nov 7, 2006, 07:09 AM

Don't get me wrong, I still lie AUD/JPY as a carry trade (and it will be even more attractive after a rate hike) but I was just thinking that today it might be best to get out before the announcement "just in case". ;) Plus, I will (alas) be at wrk during the announcement and will not be able to trade on the news although I would love to. I guess the best thing I can do is buy some when I get home (presumably after it has settled down from however it reacted) and continue with the carry trade...

Music_Producer

Nov 7, 2006, 10:48 PM

Soverc

Nov 7, 2006, 11:08 PM

I have a easy question, mainly want clarification on what I understand.

X/Y if we have GOOD news for X, this would point towards BUY
X/Y if we have GOOD news for Y, this would point towards SELL
X/Y if we have BAD news for X, this would point towards SELL
X/Y if we have BAD news for Y, this would point towards BUY

Thanks in advance.

~Shard~

Nov 7, 2006, 11:25 PM

Shard.. sorry for the late reply.. but yes, the interest rate hike has already been priced in. Everything you said was correct.. about getting out before the rate hike.. but its still at 90.83 or so.. so if you got in much before that you're still ok. If they had not raised the rates.. the AUD would have dropped.. probably 100-200 pips or so.

Again, this is like 'buy the rumors and sell the news' Everytime the markets expect that interest rates will be hiked.. they buy that currency and it keeps going up.. then the day it actually happens.. there are shorts everywhere. Of course, I still feel that AUD will go up simply because of the interest rate differentials.. and nothing else. Fundamentally.. there is not much to support the AUD.

Btw, I just signed up with CMC markets this afternoon, so hopefully my account will be set up by tomorrow and I will try a few trades on that platform :D

Thanks for the reply and better late than never! I appreciate it regardless. ;)

As for the fundamentals on AUD, I've heard reports that their economy, etc. should behave in a manner that would bolster their currency in the future - is this not what you've heard? I have heard reports that AUD over the long term could go to 96 against the JPY...

Regardless, I agree, I think now more than ever people will look at it as an excellent carry trade vehicle and that alone should keep it from huge price drops. I'll probably pop in again soon.

As for CMC, please let me know how it works out for you and if you have any questions. As I said, it is good enough for me so far and for the (beginner) stage I'm at, but perhaps someone with more "professional requirements" as yourself will not find it up to par. ;) Let me know though. :) Keep in mind the default is 2 clicks to execute a trade but you can make it one, and then once your order is executed right on that screen you can click "New" and get a new order to close the trade off. Anyway, I'm sure you'll play around with it and see it if will work well for you or not. Just remember that you need to use it in league with Oanda for the news and 5 second charting intervals.

~Shard~

Nov 7, 2006, 11:30 PM

X/Y if we have GOOD news for X, this would point towards BUY

Correct.

X/Y if we have GOOD news for Y, this would point towards SELL

Correct.

X/Y if we have BAD news for X, this would point towards SELL

Correct.

X/Y if we have BAD news for Y, this would point towards BUY

Correct.

4/4, good one! ;)

Yep, that's generally how it works, but keep in mind there are many factors. Take an announcement like today's with the AUD/JPY pair. Australia raised its interest rates (good new for the currency) however since everyone was expecting them to, this was essentially priced into the currency, and as a result the AUD/JPY weakened a bit if anything.

Also, you have to keep in mind what other currencies are doing as well. just because there is good USD news, don't automatically sell EUR/USD, as there might be reason why the EUR will go up regardless!

Many factors at play, but you have the basics. If you have any further questions just ask! :cool:

Crimson

Nov 8, 2006, 12:25 AM

I need help understanding why I can't interpret this info in the attched Oanda chart!! (This came from a Forex beginner newsletter that I just happened to get my hands on!):

"Oil prices, which had been edging up for months, suddenly jumped 11%, breaking through $53/barrel to a 19-week high. Abrubtly the US Dollar (USD), which had risen to just below $1.25 Canadian (CAD) the previous day, reversed direction and fell back. On Tuesday, when it was obvious that oil prices weren't moderating, the Dollar fell another two cents (200 pips!), then bottomed on Wednesday at $1.20 for a total losss of five cents."

Question 1:
I guess I can see that there were a strong movement around that very time (about 300 pips UP) and I thought that meant the USD got stronger, and the article above says it got weaker.

Question 2:
Also, why can I not read the numbers they are talking about? $1.25?? All I get it to be is $1.1650 - urk, I feel really stupid! :confused:

Grateful for replies, as always!! :)

Music_Producer

Nov 9, 2006, 08:37 AM

Crimson.. I have no idea why the report doesn't match the charts :confused: Maybe there's something wrong somewhere.. either the report itself.. or the timing of the chart.

Shard.. just bagged 14 pips on cmc.. my first trade with them :) I didn't have to do the demo thing.. it's a very easy platform to work with and you explained everything perfectly.. except when closing the trade. I clicked on 'new' after selling the gbp/usd.. and clicked on 'buy' immediately.. but it didn't register that. I clicked again.. and the trade was closed. So I guess you have to double click to close :p

Edit - btw.. cmc gave instant execution and a fixed 3 pip spread.. quite impressed.

~Shard~

Nov 9, 2006, 09:49 AM

Shard.. just bagged 14 pips on cmc.. my first trade with them :) I didn't have to do the demo thing.. it's a very easy platform to work with and you explained everything perfectly.. except when closing the trade. I clicked on 'new' after selling the gbp/usd.. and clicked on 'buy' immediately.. but it didn't register that. I clicked again.. and the trade was closed. So I guess you have to double click to close :p

Edit - btw.. cmc gave instant execution and a fixed 3 pip spread.. quite impressed.

That's great news Music_Producer, I'm very happy to hear that CMC performed well for you. :) As for the double-clicking to close issue, are you sure you didn't have that new trade set to the 2-click default? Honestly, on my trades I don't think I've ever had to double-click (unless I've done it subconsciously ;)) Regardless, I'm glad everything worked out well for you and that the CMC platform didn't make a liar out of me. ;) :D

As for myself, I ended up ahead this morning, but barely. I traded the EUR/USD this time, as I wanted to stay away from the GBP/USD just due to the recent BoE announcement - wasn't sure if that would skew its reaction to the news. Anyway I sold EUR/USD and made a nice 8 pip profit - I'm still a little slow on the gun, but practice makes perfect! ;) I also simultaneously traded the USD/CAD on the CAD surplus report, however it didn't move as I thought it would. Hindsight tells me I shouldn't have used the USD/CAD pair due to the USD announcements, rather another currency with CAD would have been better, but chock ity up to a lesson learned for next time. At any rate, I lost 6 pips on that, but since I was still ahead overall, I just closed my position for the loss and was fine with that - you can't win every single time!

Lots of news next week to trade on though - PPI, CPI, etc. Should be fun!

Once again, glad CMC impressed you and worked well for you Music_Producer! :cool:

thebear

Nov 9, 2006, 04:00 PM

have a question for anyone. Has anybody heard of or used such a service as this below?
http://www.wfxadvices.com/

~Shard~

Nov 9, 2006, 04:29 PM

have a question for anyone. Has anybody heard of or used such a service as this below?
http://www.wfxadvices.com/

Ah, looks like you found Music_Producer's and my website! :p ;) :D

Seriously, I'm not familiar with this service myself. I'm guessing it's like those investment "clubs" out there whereby you join up, they take your money, they tell everyone what to buy (after they've bought in at a much lower price) and there you go. Some hits, some misses.

I'd have to do some more research to see if this would be any good. I have my doubts though...

Music_Producer

Nov 9, 2006, 06:27 PM

Thebear.. such websites promtoting these services are everywhere. I would absolutely avoid them. The methods I use - always, always work. Sure, like Shard mentioned.. these sites might give some hits but usually they are like 2 or 3 while the losses will be 20. You really don't want to pay $200 or whatever every month to make losses!

All of them will have a substantial 'proven track record' Thats bull****. I can bet that if you looked at their real records they would all have major losses. So stay away from those.. or, if you have money to spend.. you can try such services.

Shard.. I did have the one click option set.. so when i hit 'sell' it executed in one click. Then i clicked on 'new' and then i hit 'buy' to close the trade.. but nothing happened.. so i hit 'buy' again. Then it executed. I tried the demo right now and the same thing.. lol, maybe i have a special cmc account :D

Ad yes, don't trade the CAD at all when there are other announcements.. come on, you know the world ignores the CAD :p just kidding.. seriously though.. the CAD won't move.. or might even move in the opposite direction when another USD news is going on.. because the entire world trades $, and unfortunately not CAD $ that much. When there's 1 trillion US $ being bought/sold.. 1 million CAD $ just won't break that kind of USD volume to create any fancy moves.

I only trade the USD/CAD when there is no other report at that time (or its a *very* minor report)

~Shard~

Nov 9, 2006, 08:20 PM

Thebear.. such websites promtoting these services are everywhere. I would absolutely avoid them. The methods I use - always, always work. Sure, like Shard mentioned.. these sites might give some hits but usually they are like 2 or 3 while the losses will be 20. You really don't want to pay $200 or whatever every month to make losses!

All of them will have a substantial 'proven track record' Thats bull****. I can bet that if you looked at their real records they would all have major losses. So stay away from those.. or, if you have money to spend.. you can try such services.

I agree - good advice. :cool:

Shard.. I did have the one click option set.. so when i hit 'sell' it executed in one click. Then i clicked on 'new' and then i hit 'buy' to close the trade.. but nothing happened.. so i hit 'buy' again. Then it executed. I tried the demo right now and the same thing.. lol, maybe i have a special cmc account :D

Haha, maybe then. ;) I'll have to pay more attention myself then. Ah well, regardless at least now you know for sure.

Ad yes, don't trade the CAD at all when there are other announcements.. come on, you know the world ignores the CAD :p just kidding.. seriously though.. the CAD won't move.. or might even move in the opposite direction when another USD news is going on.. because the entire world trades $, and unfortunately not CAD $ that much. When there's 1 trillion US $ being bought/sold.. 1 million CAD $ just won't break that kind of USD volume to create any fancy moves.

I only trade the USD/CAD when there is no other report at that time (or its a *very* minor report)

Yep, as I said, a lesson learned for next time. Thanks again for the insight. :cool:

~Shard~

Nov 10, 2006, 01:43 PM

So what are your thoughts Music_Producer on doing carry trading with the AUD/JPY right now? It seems to have backed off a bit, and with the recent news (on both sides) and so forth I was wondering if you still liked it or not. Just curious. :)

Hoef

Nov 10, 2006, 06:45 PM

~Shard~

Nov 10, 2006, 07:41 PM

Indeed, I am 40 pips in the minus .... I'll leave it but it's getting iffy

I assume you are also aware of the recent Japanese news which I eluded to above, regarding how Japan may raise its interest rate again? That would probably bring down that currency pair as well at least to some degree...

Music_Producer

Nov 11, 2006, 04:02 AM

~Shard~

Nov 11, 2006, 10:57 AM

I haven't touched AUD/JPY or GBP/JPY.. I did have a feeling that AUD/JPY would drop a bit.. to maybe 90 and then go back up. But please, don't take any of my advice :) You also have to take into account that oil prices have fallen big time, so the Yen benefits from that. If oil goes back to $70 a barrel the Yen will get hammered.. and you should see AUD going up to maybe 94.

Yep, there's many factors at play. Everything affects everything else. ;) As I stated previously, you can also use Gold as an indicator - it has a direct negative correlation with the USD. I see Gold pulling back a little from its current levels, but as long as it doesn't break support (in the low $600s) then it's off to the races! Gold broke above a triangle pattern last week, as can be seen from this chart I grabbed at the time. Next resistance is just below $680. Thereafter, resistance is $725. :cool:

http://img227.imageshack.us/img227/9611/image018cy9.gif (http://imageshack.us)

Hoef, there have been times when I've bought AUD/JPY at like 86 or so.. and then it dropped to 83 in a few days.. making me go absolutely nuts. Eventually though, it went back up to 86 and I sold it off. And then it just kept going up.

Yeah, that can get quick rough on the nerves! :eek: ;) As long as it goes back up, that's fine, but there's always the danger of getting margin called before that happens and having your account wiped out - and then some.

Here's what I look out for.. massive drops.. and then i rush in to buy. For e.g. that GBP/JPY dropped 135 pips in 2 hours or less.. and I bought tons of GBP/JPY. If it had dropped more I would have been screwed.. but obviously it corrected.. and I made a substantial profit.. plus made interest.

Remember to offset your losses by trading the news as well. That will keep your balance +ve and at the same time you're making interest as well.

Sound advice. (Hmm, pardon the pun... ;)) If you can capitalize on quick and significant movements, that's great, but you have to be careful because then in some cases, you're essentially "trading blind" - in other words, you're trading not based on any fundamentals, but based on what you think will happen - and always remember that no one can predict the markets. That's why trading on the news is so important - you're trading on actual facts, and yes there can be surprises from time to time, but you can never go to wrong trading in that manner, as opposed to what others would call "educated guessing". ;) :cool:

And don't get me wrong, I trade on quick movements like that as well at times, and based on technical analysis, but I always try and look at the big picture and do not just buy and sell because I received an indicator telling me to do so. ;)

Music_Producer

Nov 11, 2006, 04:27 PM

~Shard~

Nov 11, 2006, 04:51 PM

Yep Shard.. I always trade the news usually.. but when there's a big drop .. I get tempted and jump in :D Of course, I use a very small lot and employ a stop loss as well..so if things go the opposite way.. I am not affected much.

Thing is.. at times, you tend to get a little greedy and get tired of waiting for the news.. you're like 'Why should i make money just a few times a month? I want to make it everyday!' That's essentially a big mistake of course. Those impulsive trades that I do carry out are very rare.

I know exactly what you mean. I actually gave in to those impulses yesterday myself. I was just sitting at my computer desk, doing stuff on my Mac and watching CMC on my PC. I saw that the EUR/USD was fluctuating quite a bit, so when it dropped about 4 pips in succession, I popped in with a 50,000 lot and sold it a few seconds later for a 2 pip gain. ;) It was more of a fun trade, since I only made enough money for lunch that day, but still... :)

Btw, on a funny note.. when I opened my account at CMC the salesperson asked me ' Who recommended CMC markets to you?" and I replied 'Oh, Shard did.. I mean.. er.. this friend on an online forum' Lol :p

Haha, that is pretty funny. :D Hmm, wonder if they're going to try and find a "Shard" in their system now... ;)

Music_Producer

Nov 14, 2006, 08:36 AM

~Shard~

Nov 14, 2006, 11:49 AM

Great trade today! Bagged 26 pips today on CMC :D The US reports.. well *all* of them were bad.. ppi, retail sales, ex auto, etc.. so it was a no-brainer.. bought gbp/usd rightaway.. damn thing has climbed up by 20 more pips after I got out.

Glad CMC did the trick for you again Music_Producer! Unfortunately I was a little slow this morning and my hesitation cost me several pips. :( Basically, I saw the news come out, saw the spike and was about to click BUY when I had that brief second of doubt that maybe I had missed the spike and "if I buy right now I'm getting in at the top of the correction", i.e. that I had missed the boat. ;) At that point the EUR/USD had already shot up 20 pips (from 30 to 50), but I quickly acted as I knew I should and bought anyway at 53, selling at 60 for 7 pips. So, nowhere near how much I could have (should have!) made, but a gain nonetheless and another trade which I'm chocking up to experience - after all, I've only executed about 6 trades so far in my life! ;) :D Hopefully my speed and confidence will increase the more I trade and in a year or so I'll be at the position you are Music_Producer. :) How long have you been doing this, by the way?

Anyway, what's the next trade you have your eye on? The US CPI announcement on Thursday? Expecting more of the same?

~Shard~

Nov 14, 2006, 11:56 AM

A question for you - what are your thoughts on hedging a trade like this morning's with 2 currency pairs? I realize the risk, but am curious if you have ever thought of doing this.

As an example. The expectation was that the US #s would probably be weaker. So, what if you bought EUR/USD before the announcement to try and capture the full gain, as much as possible, and then to hedge this, you sat with the trade window open for the GBP/USD pair and your mouse over the SELL button? If the report comes out as expected, you've gotten in before the spike and made a lot of pips, but if it goes the opposite way, you could close out your EUR/USD position immediately for a loss and also sell the GBP/USD to make some money that way (and hopefully end up ahead).

Any thoughts?

~Shard~

Nov 14, 2006, 12:14 PM

I'm looking at buying the December contract for Gold very soon and holding until sometime in December. I commented on this a few days ago...

Oil is looking very attractive right now as well. One model I use for commodities like this is seasonality. Of course you need to take other things into consideration, but it is a very solid model on its own.

Take a look at this chart :

http://img208.imageshack.us/img208/3454/oiliq9.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

As I've illustrated above, the best period of seasonal strength for crude oil is roughly from the end of November to the end of March, give or take. Crude oil has gained in five of the past five periods with an average gain per period of around 17% - pretty decent. Seasonality for crude oil prices has changed slightly over the years though - normally, ten years of data is used in seasonality studies, however an exceptional advance by the price of crude oil from around $27 USD to $80 USD during the past three years has skewed the data.

Anyway, that's seasonality. From a techncial perspective, signs of a bottom in the price of crude oil have also appeared. Crude oil is trying to bounce from its October 31st low at $57 USD per barrel. Its long term trend remains upward and long term support is at $56 USD per barrel. Resistance is at its all time high (around $79.80 USD). Short term momentum indicators (I use MACD, RSI and stochastics) have turned higher from oversold levels and as a result, the initial upside technical target during the current period of seasonal strength is $66-$70 USD per barrel. There's definitely some money to be made there!

On the fundamental side, which you always have to look at as well, a balance between supply and demand seems to be returning in my opinion. OPEC has said they will reduce production during the lower demand season between summer and winter, and as you probably heard in the news, they recently reduced production by 1.2M bpd. Oil inventories in the US have started to fall from record levels and seasonal demand in the US will increase as the winter heating season approaches. Personally, I expect demand this winter to be higher than last winter, which was the warmest winter in the past decade. maybe this winter will surpass it, but I have my doubts.

Meanwhile, rising demand for oil by nations such as China and India appears to be having an impact. From the latest reports I've read, China is planning to start filling its long term storage facility in 2007. And as always, geopolitical events also will continue to influence prices and I don't see those going away anytime soon. ;) :cool:

Anyway, just some info for anyone who's interested. I'm by no means a Forex expert yet like Music_Producer, so I thought I might as well contribute in my own way. :cool:

Music_Producer

Nov 14, 2006, 05:29 PM

Hey Shard, you had a good trade too! Even a 1 pip profit is excellent.. remember, it's the total pips we make that counts. If you made a pip a day and that 1 pip was $100.. that's $3000 a month. Obviously we make more (and could lose too) pips than that.

Hedging.. well no one would be fast enough to close one position and open another.. within half a second! What you could do is.. open the eur/usd .. say 'buy' and employ a stop loss of 10 pips. And sell gbp/usd at the same time and employ the same stop loss.

So if the usd goes up.. and eur/usd moves down.. it will hit the stop loss and close.. while the gbp/usd you can sell for whatever profit. I don't like doing this though.. because of all the whipsaws that take place before any report. I've tried it on demo accounts and while some trades have been fantastic.. majority of them hit the stop losses before the reports.. and then what if the report is as expected.. so the currency doesn't move much? You'll hit a stop loss of 10 pips on one pair.. and make a profit of 5 pips on the other.. still netting a loss. But it's definitely worth a try.. do it on your demo account first of course.. and see if you are comfortable with that strategy.

Damn, oil was $20 a barrel? :eek: Man these OPEC people are so greedy.. but yeah, you are right about energy costs rising during the winter.. well look at all our heating bills and all that as well. 17% a year is very attractive indeed. Somehow I can't find oil and metals and stuff in my cmc account.. perhaps US residents can't trade that or i'm just a dimwit. Ahh i'll look for it later.

For tomorrow, its the Empire Manufacturing Index.. that should be an important report (if it deviates) I like trading the GBP during the UK repors (usually at 4.30 am EST) because the GBP/USD almost always moves everytime.

Oops to answer your other question.. I have been doing this news strategy since the last 4-5 months. The first few months that i did forex (in 2005) I lost all my money because i used to trade on gut feeling and charts.. kinda like trading blindly! Lost $3000 and was so pissed off that i gave up.. but came back and recovered all my money and more :D

~Shard~

Nov 14, 2006, 10:36 PM

Hey Shard, you had a good trade too! Even a 1 pip profit is excellent.. remember, it's the total pips we make that counts. If you made a pip a day and that 1 pip was $100.. that's $3000 a month. Obviously we make more (and could lose too) pips than that.

Yep, I'm definitely not complaining. After all, you can't get greedy, or else, well, bad things happen. ;)

Hedging.. well no one would be fast enough to close one position and open another.. within half a second! What you could do is.. open the eur/usd .. say 'buy' and employ a stop loss of 10 pips. And sell gbp/usd at the same time and employ the same stop loss.

Yeah, it was just a thought. As you say, I might try it on my demo account and see.

Damn, oil was $20 a barrel? :eek: Man these OPEC people are so greedy.. but yeah, you are right about energy costs rising during the winter.. well look at all our heating bills and all that as well. 17% a year is very attractive indeed. Somehow I can't find oil and metals and stuff in my cmc account.. perhaps US residents can't trade that or i'm just a dimwit. Ahh i'll look for it later.

I don't know why they would limit it for US residents. For me at least, if you go to "Instruments" there should be 2 main trees you can drill down into - "CFD" and "Foreign Exchange". Under "CFD" there should be CFDs for multiple countries (Asia, Canada, Europe, Scandinavia, UK, US) and also one called "CFD - Commodities". Under this one you can find the monthly contracts for Oil, Energy, Metals, you name it. In the case of Oil check out the December contract, as the November contract expires in a couple days.

I believe the outright spot prices for Gold and Silver (not sure about anything else) are in the "Foreign Exchange" section though. Basically, you're trading XAU (Gold) or XAG (Silver) against the USD, just like a currency pair (except one is a commodity). There is no expiry on spot contracts of course.

For tomorrow, its the Empire Manufacturing Index.. that should be an important report (if it deviates) I like trading the GBP during the UK repors (usually at 4.30 am EST) because the GBP/USD almost always moves everytime.

Cool, I'll try and be around for this trade and will try my hand at GBP/USD this time since I've done EUR/USD the past couple of times.

Also, OPEC's announcement is tomorrow so I'll be listening into that one as well. Unfortunately I'll be at work for it, so I won't be able to act on anything, but after the announcement is made I'll feel confident in acting on Oil one way or the other. :cool:

Oops to answer your other question.. I have been doing this news strategy since the last 4-5 months. The first few months that i did forex (in 2005) I lost all my money because i used to trade on gut feeling and charts.. kinda like trading blindly! Lost $3000 and was so pissed off that i gave up.. but came back and recovered all my money and more :D

Wow, I must say I'm surprised! With your knowledge and experience on the subject you come across as an "old pro" and I would have thought you had been doing this along time! I'm glad you've been able to pick it up so quickly and have such great success with it. It also gives me confidence that the learning curve isn't necessarily steep and I might be trading at your level sooner rather than later myself. ;) :) That's great for you Music_Producer.

So, when are we starting our own hedge fund? :D

Music_Producer

Nov 15, 2006, 06:59 AM

Shard, don't trade the GBP/USD today.. or use caution.. the GBP/USD has dropped by more than a hundred pips so far.. on bad claimant count and inflation reports.. I traded it for 20 pips on cmc.. and then exited.. thinking it would stall.. but it just kept dropping.

Another news report coming out at the same time (5.30 am EST) is the canadian manufacturing shipments report.. so i see that clashing with the us empire manufacturing index. I won't be trading this one - simply because there are 2 reports.. hey when we form a fund maybe you can trade one pair and myself the other :D

I'm still itching to trade today.. i'll probably trade the eur/usd on the us report.. but something tells me to trade the usd/cad instead. Ahhhh ..what to do ! :eek:

~Shard~

Nov 15, 2006, 07:39 AM

Thanks for the head's up! I'll watch the trade with caution and instead focus on the EUR/USD or USD?CAD pairs... I won't force a trade if it isn't there of course. ;)

Music_Producer

Nov 15, 2006, 07:47 AM

Hey! What are you doing up so early? :p

Just read that an 8.1 earthquake struck japan.. don't think it will affect markets though.

Edit - never mind, struck north of japan.. not major cities.

Music_Producer

Nov 15, 2006, 07:47 AM

Wait.. 8.1?!! That's HUGE! :eek:

Music_Producer

Nov 15, 2006, 08:36 AM

7 pips on the eur/usd (us empire survey) .. how did you do on the usd/cad? Hope it moved a bit!

~Shard~

Nov 15, 2006, 09:47 AM

Yeah, I heard the tsunami news as well but it doesn't seem to have affected things too much - at least it hadn't this morning from what I could tell.

As for the trade I didn't want to chance it so I didn't pull the pin. The Oanda news service didn't report the numbers right away, so basically I saw the EUR/USD tank and assumed the US #s were good. But I also didn't know how the CAD #s came out, so was hesitant to trade USD/CAD in case the news conflicted. Afterwards I see that I still could have made some pips on either trade even after the initial spikes but, well, hindsight is always 20/20. ;) Plus, then I would have been trading on aftershocks (an appropriate term for this morning I think! ;)) not the news itself.

So no trade for me this morning but I will be keeping my eye on the OPEC and FOMC announcements today and will be set to trade US CPI tomorrrow morning. That's the nice thing with forex trading - there's always another trade to be made and you know when it's going to happen. ;) :cool:

Music_Producer

Nov 15, 2006, 05:20 PM

Yeah, the US report came out much, much better than expected.. so regardless of what the CAD reports were.. the USD would have hammered it anyway, since there was broad based US$ buying. I kept switching between USD/CAD and EUR/USD every few seconds.. lol.. as I couldn't decide what to trade.

Tomorrow's core CPI report is important.. but if it comes out as expected, then the unemployment claims become significant.. in other words.. if there is a big deviation in the unemp claims.. that will move the markets.

I'm looking forward to trading the GBP/USD on the UK retail sales report tomorrow. What I have noticed about the GBP/USD is.. that if a report is good/bad.. the GBP/USD moves in one direction.. and keeps going that way until the US session opens. So when i got out last night for 20 pips on the UK trade.. I could have stayed in the trade and grabbed 150 pips. This is, of course, what I have noticed so far.. things could always change.

~Shard~

Nov 15, 2006, 05:41 PM

Yep, I'll be watching the CPI and unemployment #s as well. As for the UK retail #s, I didn't have that one on my radar screen, so thanks for the head's up. Depending what time it is for me, I'll see if I'll be available to trade it or not. ;) If not, then bag a couple pips for me! :D

Hoef

Nov 15, 2006, 10:45 PM

Music_producer & ~Shard~ .... What is your take on CMC after using it for a while with the use of oanda news, and / or multiple other screens? I like the idea of potentially trading other commodities.

Music_Producer

Nov 16, 2006, 04:08 AM

CMC is very good when it comes to spreads, and their execution. I don't like their ordering system though.. when you hit buy or sell.. you then have to click 'new' and then close the position. It should be a one-click procedure. Also, on their website it states that you can get multiple logins for one account (so i can have 2 screens open.. and hit buy/sell without hitting 'new') But when i emailed them, i got a flat out 'sorry, we cannot offer multiple logins unless there are exceptional circumstances'! Whatever! :confused: So I still make profits on CMC, but it could be better..secounds count in forex.

so I still like oanda's trading procedure.. but i love cmc's spreads.. ahhh.. man.. all Cmc have to do is make everything simplified.. or allow 2 logins per account and I would leave Oanda rightaway. Oh, for carry trades, oanda is the best

Additionally, Hoef, I hope your AUD/JPY is not in a loss anymore.. its steadily come up now.. its at 90.45 right now.. I don't know what levels you bought it at but hopefully you can close the position for a profit (or break even) and you'll have earned interest.

Music_Producer

Nov 16, 2006, 08:35 AM

Grabbed 12 pips on the UK retail sales report, and 7 pips on the US CPI report.. CMC hiccuped a bit during the US report.. and i had to click twice.. so lost quite a few pips.. but good profit nonetheless.

US cpi came out worse than expected. Anyway, more data coming in in half an hour

~Shard~

Nov 16, 2006, 09:43 AM

Grabbed 10 pips this morning - very happy with myself! :D I still don't have quite the dexterity you must have though Music_Producer - I'm trying to act as fast as I possibly can, yet still always seem to miss the majority of the initial spike. ;) Ah well, all in good time...

So further to this, do you always wait until the news actually comes out, or if it lags the spike by even a little bit, do you ever just trade on the spike, assuming what the news was? It seems like if I wait for the news flashes, then by the time it takes me to digest them and execute a trade, it's almost too late.

Did you trade the UK Retail #s this morning? It was at 3:30 AM for me, so this time I chose sleep over trading - maybe next time... ;)

And I agree with you about CMC - good in many respects, but could be improved. Oanda has many advantages over it, so for me at least, I will continue to use both for my trading needs. :cool:

Music_Producer, did you find the Commodities section in your platform?

Music_Producer

Nov 16, 2006, 04:41 PM

Hey Shard, I think I am quicker because I trade as soon as I hear the news.. maybe you trade on the spike. Also, CMC does not execute rightaway.. remember on Oanda how I used to get in before the spike? It doesn't happen with CMC.. there's a lag of 2, sometimes - 3 seconds.. and then my order gets executed. Then i click 'new' and exit the trade.. but I do lose quite a number of pips this way.

Also, I think I am right - CMC doesn't let US residents trade with other commodities.. I simply cannot find oil, etc. I remember signing up with Saxo .. and they had a little notice where it stated that I couldn't trade commodities. I am sure CMC allows trading gold and silver though.

~Shard~

Nov 16, 2006, 07:47 PM

Hey Shard, I think I am quicker because I trade as soon as I hear the news.. maybe you trade on the spike.

Do you use the Oanda news service then, or one that is faster? I'll pay more attention during my next trade, but with Oanda's service at least it seems as though the news happens either simultaneously with the resultant spike or even a fraction of a second afterwards. <shrug>

Also, CMC does not execute rightaway.. remember on Oanda how I used to get in before the spike? It doesn't happen with CMC.. there's a lag of 2, sometimes - 3 seconds.. and then my order gets executed. Then i click 'new' and exit the trade.. but I do lose quite a number of pips this way.

Yeah, I have noticed that too. It executes quickly, but not instantaneously, and then of course it takes a second or so to come up with the "new" option so that you can close the trade out. Ah well, the fixed spreads are still nice.... ;)

Also, I think I am right - CMC doesn't let US residents trade with other commodities.. I simply cannot find oil, etc. I remember signing up with Saxo .. and they had a little notice where it stated that I couldn't trade commodities. I am sure CMC allows trading gold and silver though.

Interesting, I wonder why that is? Ah well, what can ya do I guess...

So are you going to be trading the US housing starts and building permits tomorrow? I'll be watching for sure to see if there is a trade or not to be made.

Hoef

Nov 17, 2006, 12:14 AM

Additionally, Hoef, I hope your AUD/JPY is not in a loss anymore.. its steadily come up now.. its at 90.45 right now.. I don't know what levels you bought it at but hopefully you can close the position for a profit (or break even) and you'll have earned interest.

Yeah it has come back ... but all in all I took a 20 pips loss. Recovering slightly couple of pips at a time (made only 3 today on the CPI but happy anyway). Your account and how you lost big time in the beginning was quite motivating. Thanks for sharing!

Music_Producer

Nov 17, 2006, 05:14 AM

Yeah Hoef.. it's happened to me before.. I would make 5-10 pips profit everyday.. and then wham! a 40 pip loss .. just to wipe out everything i'd made.. heh. You'll get all your pips back soon.

Shard.. i might trade the usd housing starts but i'm so darn sleepy right now. I went to bed at 7 am yesterday.. got maybe 4 hours of sleep.. so I'm not sure if I'll be able to stay up till 5.30 am :p After 4 am, it gets really tough! Should be a good trade though.. according to me, well the housing starts should obviously be a negative number.. I mean, you can see it everywhere.. the housing slump.

Who knows though? Everyone expected the US cpi to come out positive.. and it didn't. I'm more confident of a negative housing number though.

nhallmark

Dec 1, 2006, 11:49 AM

Hi,

I saw this thread a few weeks ago and I've read through all the pages, just learning so much.

Im starting to get it. I spent the past two weeks just playing with the demo account and I've had some success.

It seems like the key to make this work is not just making money, but knowing WHY I made money and the more I do it and learn the more confident I get, regardless of whether I made a profit or a loss, because I know WHY, either way.

Thank you Music_Producer, Shard, Curren~sea, and everyone else for providing all this information for the rest of us.

I truly appreciate it,
Nathan

P.S. Is there a forex dictionary anywhere, online or off, that would tell me the definitions of PCE, etc. and what it means?

Forexfactory gives a description sometimes, but other times they dont and so I dont know whether a high or low # is good or bad. Thanks

~Shard~

Dec 1, 2006, 03:39 PM

Glad you found the thread useful nhallmark. :) As for a forex dictionary, I don't know of one offhand. You could either Google for one, or try a site like Investopedia (http://www.investopedia.com). :cool:

Apologies on being away from this thread for a while. In the last couple of weeks I have made some money on buying EUR/USD, a couple AUD/JPY carry trades, lost money a couple times too :o and made money buying the December Oil contract at $59 and selling at $62. In the upcoming weeks I will be shorting the NASDAQ100, S&P500 and DJIA30 and they are all well overdue for a correction (might not happen to the New Year though due to tax implications). The Blow Off phase is almost complete and if history repeats itself (as it has with previous Blow Offs) the Blow Down phase will be imminent and profitable. :cool:

Hoef

Dec 2, 2006, 12:08 AM

~Shard~

Dec 2, 2006, 04:35 PM

Yeah the AUD/JPY trade has been quite profitable lately .... I thought historically the lull is in April - May time frame?

I am not aware of a historic lull for the AUD/JPY currency pair at all, let alone during the above timeframe, but then again, I'm new to all this, so that could be the case I suppose! ;) I would assume there would be too many economic factors at play though for this to occur on a consistent basis, but I'll put on my charting analysis hat and see what I can find...

Hoef

Dec 2, 2006, 06:46 PM

I am not aware of a historic lull for the AUD/JPY currency pair at all, let alone during the above timeframe, but then again, I'm new to all this, so that could be the case I suppose! ;) I would assume there would be too many economic factors at play though for this to occur on a consistent basis, but I'll put on my charting analysis hat and see what I can find...

Sorry ~Shard~ I ment a lull in stocks

Music_Producer

Dec 2, 2006, 07:12 PM

Hey, I'm back! Wait for me :p

Been away on a trip to meet my best friends in Washington.. and it was a bloody mess there with the winter storm. Ugh.. glad to be back home in Cali!

Traded the US report on Friday for a nice 29 pips on CMC. That was, ironically the last trade I was going to do with CMC because of all the slippage, but it turned out to be a very good execution so maybe I'll stick with them more :D

Oanda's spreads are back to 10 and I think that's good enough.. better than 15 pip spread. Now if only I could trade on both platforms.

Have you guys watched the massacre of the US $ lately? Man more than 500+ pip moves on GBP/USD, EUR/USD, etc. Obviously this started off with the Chinese statement that they would be diversifying into other currencies besides the $ for their forex reserves. The same damn thing happened in 2005 when I was trading. The chinese announced some crap like that and I recall the USD dropping 300 pips in half an hour :eek:

I'm in on the AUD/JPY trade currently.. Japanese inflation doesn't seem to be a concern, so maybe BOJ won't raise interest rates on the Yen.. even if they do.. the AUD/JPY yield is still excellent enough for all the banks in the world to 'carry' out the carry trade. I would expect to see the AUD/JPY still go higher.. maybe 94+.. even upto 100 if the BOJ doesn't raise JPY rates.

I made my first loss on the USD/CAD pair during the CAD employment change report.. big time slippage, so my trade was executed after 4-5 seconds (while i was sweating away lol) and then the spike reversed. Made a 12 pip loss.. not a biggie but I definitely didn't like that. CAD $ behaves quite strangely at times.. :confused:

Anyway, hope you guys have been trading good (as I can see Shard and Hoef have been at it) :D

Music_Producer

Dec 2, 2006, 07:21 PM

nhallmark, check out http://www.bls.gov. That's the US Department of Labor website.. they give an explanation of all these terms, but to summarize (or summarise)..

If a report has anything to do with hiking/lowering interest rates, it will move the currency and..

If a report reflects the strength of the economy.. it will move the currency.

For e.g. Employment reports, GDP, etc. are all reflective of the strength of the economy. The better the reports, the currency will move higher and vice versa.

Reports like CPI, PPI would sound confusing.. because:

These reports are basically measuring inflation. The higher the inflation, the currency should drop right? Because its bad for the economy.. but it doesnt work that way. The higher the inflation.. the greater the chance of an interest rate hike.. so the currency moves up in anticipation of that rate hike.

If the next few inflation reports come out lower than expected.. then the markets will figure that the Feds don't need to raise the interest rates, and they might actually reduce the rates to boost the economic growth. So the USD will take a beating. Why do you think the AUD/JPY went up? Because the JPY CPI numbers came out lower than expected (inflation wasn't a risk) so the markets assume that the BOJ won't raise Yen interest rates.

So two types of reports for trading - economic growth indicators, and indicators that can affect an interest rate decision.

And you already know *how* to make the money. These threads give quite a number of examples. The real trick is to get in before any spike.. to have your order executed instantly, and to get out quickly with your profits. That, is by far, the biggest challenge to overcome. If I worked at a bank and had access to currency trading.. geez.. I wonder what I could dp :rolleyes: :p

~Shard~

Dec 3, 2006, 10:23 PM

Sorry ~Shard~ I ment a lull in stocks

Ah, gotcha Hoef. I think I know what you are getting at, however I was speaking specifically about Blow Offs and Blow Downs - allow me to elaborate.

Blow offs in the US equity market are rare, but wonderful events for investors holding US equity securities, ETFs and mutual funds. ;) Significant gains are recorded in a relatively short period of time. Unfortunately, blow offs are followed by blow downs where gains realized during the blow offs are quickly lost. When blow offs occur at the end of an economic cycle the blow downs frequently take equity indices to below levels where the “blow off” started.

Blow offs are characterized by a period of 2-4 months when broadly-based equity indices such as the DJIA and S&P500 move sharply higher with little or no correction. Roughly ten blow offs have been identified during the past 34 years with an average gain of 13% per period. Identifying the top of a blow off is virtually impossible. Blow offs take the market to unexpected levels on the upside. Guessing when the top has occurred can be hazardous to your financial health - trust me, I've experienced this firsthand. ;) Technical indicators (e.g. breaking of trend lines, RSI rollovers, MACD, stochastics, etc.) are useful only after the peak has occurred.

The blow down phase is to be avoided at all cost unless you plan on shorting the indicies themselves as I plan to do. ;) :D The average loss per period after the past 10 blow offs has been about 18%. Blow downs typically occur 2-6 months following blow offs. Blow downs are characterized by declining investor sentiment, technical weakness in broadly-based equity indices, a fall in the ratio of stocks in an uptrend versus a downtrend and reductions in economic and earnings estimates offered by analysts.

Since I am an "investing geek" I track this stuff. :o Following is data for the past 2 blow offs and blow downs (in a messy ad hoc attempt at a chart :o ):

Bottom date*** DJIA************** Top date******** DJIA ************* Percent Change

Oct. 15, 1999 10,020************* Jan.14, 2000*** 11,723************ 17.0
Jan. 28, 2002** 9,618************* Mar.19, 2002** 10,635************ 10.6

Top date******** DJIA************** Bottom date*** *** DJIA********** Percent Decline

Jan.14, 2000** 11,723************* Mar. 7, 2000*** * 9,796************ 16.4
Mar. 19, 2002 10,635************* Oct. 9, 2002*** * 7,286************ 21.5

In my opinion, we are experiencing a Blow Off. The DJIA and S&P500 recorded exceptional non-stop gains from mid-July until the end of November. (Specifically, the DJIA added 15% and the S&P500 gained 14%.) More importantly, I think we are near the end of the Blow Off phase. Will the Blow Down phase start son? Has it started already? Impossible to say. I am seriously considering taking short positions, however I almost think things will not start to fully correct until the New Year, as many investors will not want to take money off the table and realize significant tax gains prior to the end of the year. So, I'm aiming more for January, however that strategy could change at any time. ;)

December is a traditionally weak month for the USD so I will be looking at buying more Gold (next technical target of resistance is around $675/oz), possibly shorting the DJIA, S&P500 and NDAQ100 and will keep my eye on buying EUR/USD and GBP/USD. Lots of opportunities to make money out there and everything is related to each other if you look close enough - or stand far enough back to see the big picture, as it were. :cool:

Hoef

Dec 3, 2006, 11:44 PM

Interesting thoughts ~Shard~ ... Funny how things come around. I used to be a more "fundamentalist" stock picker with the only use for technicals to "time" entry or departure. Now that I have been active in the FX market I am becoming more of a technical trader as of lately .... High Probability Trading by Marcel Link (http://www.amazon.com/High-Probability-trading-Marcel-Link/dp/0071381562) is suddenly very applicable.

Since this became the default go to thread for all investments we might as well start a list of favorite books. Mine besides the one includes Jeremy Siegel's Stocks for the Long Run

Music_Producer

Dec 4, 2006, 08:21 AM

~Shard~

Dec 4, 2006, 08:36 AM

Shard, I think the blow down phase has already started.. or should start soon. It seems like all the news reports point to a slowing US economy.. couple that with rising interest rates and you should see the $ and the stock markets fall hard.

Unless, the banks keep everything artifically inflated :mad:

I agree - on both points. ;)

So which trades do you see as the major ones this week? There's the AUD interest rate announcement tomorrow, US employment, non-farm payrolls... Anything related to the GBP which I can set my alarm clock for? ;)

Music_Producer

Dec 4, 2006, 08:53 AM

You sure you want to ruin your beauty sleep for a few pips? :p

Tomorrow, as far as GBP is concerned there's the Services PMI.. but the more significant reports should be the Canadian interest rate statement (again, trade only if they either hike or lower.. if there's no change do nothing), and the big ones should be the USD non farm and ISM reports.

Aussie GDP should be more important than the interest rate report (again, assuming they keep the rate the same) If they hike/lower the rate, trade accordingly.. you should see moves of 50 pips+. I've seen more movement on the AUD/NZD pair as compared to other crosses.

~Shard~

Dec 4, 2006, 09:46 AM

You sure you want to ruin your beauty sleep for a few pips? :p

Haha, yeah I don't mind if it's worth my while... ;)

Aussie GDP should be more important than the interest rate report (again, assuming they keep the rate the same) If they hike/lower the rate, trade accordingly.. you should see moves of 50 pips+. I've seen more movement on the AUD/NZD pair as compared to other crosses.

Yeah, I have that one on my radar screen as well (Aus GDP) - do you have any predictions on that one? From what I've been reading lately quite a number of analysts are bullish on the Australian economy, so should the GDP report be positive for AUD - or perhaps more importantly, is everyone expecting the GDP report to be good?

As for the AUD/NZD pair, I've never looked at it before. I think I'll add it to my "wacth list" and start tracking it. :)

nhallmark

Dec 5, 2006, 09:31 AM

Hi guys,

I made 4 pips on USD Unit labor costs and nonfarm productivity this morning.

I didn't trade the CAD interest rate because it stayed the same, as Im sure you know. And Im glad I didn't-that spike went down and then straight back up!

Anyway, thanks for the info and the link, Music_Producer. That clarified some of it.

On another note, I got a free trial for "trade the news" and it says on their site that it lasts 7 days and mine is still working after three weeks.

Does anyone know what's up with that?

Nathan

Music_Producer

Dec 5, 2006, 10:06 AM

Nathan, I guess you got lucky with the news trial.. just don't let them know its still working :p

Beautiful day today.. made 12 pips on the GBP report, and 24 pips on the US non farm report (both on CMC markets) I wish everyday was like this :D

I didn't trade the CAD either nathan.. when rates stay the same, I just prefer to stay out.. who knows what the heck can happen.

I think the USD strength this morning was not just because of the Non farm report (wasn't that great) but mainly because the USD has been oversold.. and it was time for a little profit taking.

~Shard~

Dec 5, 2006, 10:53 AM

Nathan, I guess you got lucky with the news trial.. just don't let them know its still working

Yeah, I think I might have to sign up for a free trial as well - preferrably during a very busy economic week... ;) :D

Beautiful day today.. made 12 pips on the GBP report, and 24 pips on the US non farm report (both on CMC markets) I wish everyday was like this :D

Nice one! Glad that CMC is still working out okay for you. I just watched the trades today, didn't act. The news seemed to be a bit inconsistent, so I wasn't sure which way things would go, and then of course it was too late. ;) The EUR/USD did have a nice steady movement for a bit even after the announcement, but I felt that "the moment had passed" and wasn't about to jump in and trade on speculation. :o ;)

I didn't trade the CAD either nathan.. when rates stay the same, I just prefer to stay out.. who knows what the heck can happen.

Yep, my thoughts exactly - I stayed away from this one as well.

I think the USD strength this morning was not just because of the Non farm report (wasn't that great) but mainly because the USD has been oversold.. and it was time for a little profit taking.

Yeah, I was wondering the same thing. And that S&P and DJIA just keep climbing. Man, there's going to be some nice shorting to do on those guys when the time is right... patience... :D :cool:

Unfortunately I will not be around for the AUD announcements tonight (interest rate + GDP). I'll wait until the dust settles from those and, either way, I might pop in again for a carry trade.

If you don't mind me asking Music_Producer, what lot size do you carry trade with? I've only just done $100K so far as to minimize my risk until I feel more comfortable with the currency pair, but would love to go for more.... ;) :)

Music_Producer

Dec 5, 2006, 05:31 PM

~Shard~

Dec 5, 2006, 10:37 PM

Hey Shard, my lot size all depends on the strength of the reports. If its anything non-farm, I push it up to 500k.. GBP stuff is usually 300 k. Interest rate decisions - I have anywhere from 2 million to 3 million ready to trade. I am using smaller lots now with CMC because I'm not sure if I'll get slippage again.

Cool. Yeah, I'm not there yet. :o I think next year I'll start trying larger lot sizes - obviously I'll need to dump more money into my CMC account to cover the margin requirements though... even at 100:1 you still need a fair bit to trade millions of units... ;)

One thing I've noted and the good thing about CMC is, that if they cannot execute you at the market price, they'll let you know with a re-quote instead of letting you in and then showing an order executed much later at a different price. So its either a trade or no-trade situation.. which is good. Sometimes they mess up though.

Yeah, this happened to me once as well. It is good, because in a way they're honoring their trade such that they aren't executing it for you at a price you did not specify. Still, it's not ideal, but I doubt you'll ever find a perfect trading platform that gives you small fixed spreads and instant execution 100% of the time. If you do, please let me know. ;) :D

On Oanda I have used huge lots at times.. when the BOE surprised everyone with their interest rate hike.. I used 4 million GBP/USD. Needless to say, that was the biggest profit I've ever made..with their 5 pip spread (at the time) and instant execution :D

Yeah, that would have been nice! I'm looking forward to trading some of those gems myself in the near future myself. Even though big announcements like that don't happen all the time, one of the nice things with forex trading is that there are always announcements to trade and you know when they are. It's not like the stock market where, apart from earnings, major announcements can come completely out of the blue and hammer or skyrocket a stock without warning. Or, only the pre-market traders can take advantage of it. :mad: ;)

So do you think the USD data tomorrow will be worth trading? How about the Aussie employment data?

Music_Producer

Dec 5, 2006, 11:29 PM

Yeah Shard, I never liked stocks too much.. I mean, all your money rests in the hand of a bunch of greedy corp bigwigs who can ruin the company any time they want to! For tomorrow, I'm looking at the GBP industrial report, the US ADP report (I think last time it caused quite a move)

Aussie employment report.. I'm not sure I'll be trading that, don't think I'll be home at that time. Please, please if you're going to be home.. be ready to trade the NZD.. their interest rate announcement is set to be unchanged at 7.25% but markets have a 10-20% expectation of a rate hike. If this happens, you'll see NZD going through the roof.

Music_Producer

Dec 6, 2006, 04:34 AM

Fantastic trade! The GBP report came out much worse than expected.. bagged 28 pips :D The funny thing is, everyone was expecting the UK industrial report to come out solidly positive.. so it fell hard. It went to a max of about 50 pips and now its coming up again.. but I don't think it can stay up for long.

Music_Producer

Dec 6, 2006, 04:50 AM

Interesting article to read:

http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/Investing/JubaksJournal/FedHasLostControlOverInterestRates.aspx

And I keep telling everyone that the US will still raise interest rates :p (self-gloating emotions are taking over)

Edit : Shard, this could be the start of the stock market blow down/blow off? (lol) when the rates start rising again. Good times.

nhallmark

Dec 6, 2006, 09:22 AM

Err...I lost 12 pips on the AUD GDP yesterday because I traded on the m/m data and didnt even look at the y/y data.:confused:

But, I learned something-y/y is more important(obviously) and if I dont understand all the factors before the trade don't trade.(duh)

So, I made $110 and lost $120 yesterday-but Im learning.:)

This is all in my game account, in case you're wondering.;)

Nathan

nhallmark

Dec 6, 2006, 10:50 AM

Oh, I forgot to mention that yesterday, when I posted about my trial with Trade The News, I got an email about 20 minutes later notifying me that this was the last day of my trial and I needed to subscribe.

...so I did.

I just think its funny that it kept going until I said something about it to someone else(you guys):p

nhallmark

Dec 6, 2006, 09:16 PM

Just traded the AUD employment data. I was up 10 pips and then oanda widened the pip spread to 14 and I closed at -5 pips. I should have waited until it went back down and I could have kept my pips but it could have gone down anyway, so I closed. man, that pisses me off:mad:

~Shard~

Dec 6, 2006, 09:28 PM

Sorry to hear about that Nathan. One of the benefits of CMC is fixed spreads, but it's not without its shortcoming as well. ;)

Better luck next time! :)

nhallmark

Dec 7, 2006, 07:56 AM

Thanks Shard.

Tha GBP interest rate stayed the same this morning and the EUR interest rate moved up by 25bp which was expected so I didnt trade either of those.

It would be cool, one day, to be able to go buy a forex broker, and implement fixed spreads and instant execution and make it just for the mac...I just dont want the responsibility of running the company after that.:p

Music_Producer

Dec 7, 2006, 08:43 AM

That's allright nathan.. spreads will most probably widen more than the usual 10 pips especially on pairs like AUD/USD. I have seen a 25 pip spread on GBP/USD on Oanda.. I think a lot of members left Oanda on that day :D

I just traded Trichet's speech.. bagged 12 pips. This was the first time I traded a 'speech' and he was hawkish about the Euro, so the EUR/USD rose by about 30 pips or so.. I got out pretty early. I didn't trade the GBP and Eur interest rate decisions because they came out the same.

I think trading this speech was fairly easy.. CMC execution was instant, and I believe even on Oanda the spreads remained small (2 pips on eur/usd) This is probably because its not really a news event.. rather just a 'direction' offered as to regarding rate cuts/hikes.

Tomorrow is the notorious Non farm employment change for the USD. This report moves the currencies a lot, but it also whipsaws like nuts because of 'revisions' to previous month's data.

nhallmark

Dec 7, 2006, 09:27 AM

I checked out CMC but for now, I'll have to stick with oanda until I've got the $2000 minimum. Do you run CMC in parallels?

The only reason I can think of that they raise the spread is to cover their bandwidth charges, but if they're geting 2-3 pips already, it shouldnt matter because I doubt it costs 10 cents per trade even during news time. Maybe they're just greedy.

I read that article you linked to, but Im still new to all this. I dont know whether to think "this is just some guy going off an a tangent" or "this is the overall feeling of the market". I also dont know whether the USD is just now getting to this point or whether its happened before and this was the result or if every country is always on the edge and its a constant battle to maintain stability.(im only 20 years old which is why i dont know this stuff already)

So much to learn! ...its fun though.

~Shard~

Dec 7, 2006, 02:13 PM

I traded the US #s this morning and nabbed 4 pips on the EUR/USD. Nothing spectactular and only $100K, but hey, better than nothing. ;) I still want to get more experience before I start using larger lot sizes - I'll save that for next year. :cool:

I checked out CMC but for now, I'll have to stick with oanda until I've got the $2000 minimum. Do you run CMC in parallels?

Yeah, Oanda has more granular real-time charting than CMC and a better news service so I have Oanda running on my Mac for the instant charting and news alerts, and then CMC on my PC for actual trade execution. Works quite well!

The only reason I can think of that they raise the spread is to cover their bandwidth charges, but if they're geting 2-3 pips already, it shouldnt matter because I doubt it costs 10 cents per trade even during news time. Maybe they're just greedy.

I think it's the latter, not the former... ;)

So much to learn! ...its fun though.

Exactly. :) Realize also that Music_Producer hasn't been doing this very long either, and I have been trading for only a couple months myself, so don't feel intimidated - in some respects, this isn't something that requires years and years of experience or a CFA to do. ;) Just do your research, observe, carry out your pretend trades as if it were your own real money, learn form your mistakes, and you can succeed as well. :cool:

nhallmark

Dec 7, 2006, 11:00 PM

I think it's the latter, not the former... ;)

LOL!

I made 1/2 a pip on USD consumer credit. I thought it would move more because
the numbers were way below expectations, so I traded, but afterwards it looks
like it was already priced in a few mintues before.

Music_Producer

Dec 7, 2006, 11:20 PM

Nathan, that article was actually quite appropriate and well written. It's what the market is feeling.. in the sense - the thousands of banks and hedge funds all over the world. When there's a fear that the USD will keep going down, everyone starts selling .. and that just leads to panic.

I remember when everyone would claim that the housing market would never 'crash' or prices would remain the same. Yeah, sure :rolleyes: That was 2 years ago, and I told a few of my friends not to get into that business.. or they'll be screwed. Needless to say, they did not heed my warning and now they're sitting with a loss of an average around $85,000+. It's just plain stupid to defy logic and be optimistic all the time - especially when it comes to money! Always, always take into account the worst case scenario and act accordingly.

The only way to stop the USD slide is to increase interest rates. Like the article stated, it's better to slow down the domestic US economy than risk a plunge in the $'s value internationally. If the USD keeps going down, you know how much more everything will cost? That will slow down the economy more than a series of interest rate hikes.

Everything you buy (almost everything) comes from China. If the US dollar keeps going down in value compared to the Chinese Yuan, all the stuff you buy from Walmart to Apple.. will get more expensive..not to mention oil. This will lead to people spending less money.. and just becomes a vicious cycle.

Now, China can obviously step in (because they want the US to buy more chinese goods for their own economy's sake) and either reduce the value of their own currency.. or buy billions of USD to make the USD go up.

Funny, isn't it? You can't predict where the $ will go. Common sense and fundamentals state that it should go down.. but financial entities.. indeed entire countries might not want that happening. So the $ might go up. It's a very delicate situation.

The USA is basically a consumer nation now.. while China is the supplier (well, other countries too) You want to keep the consumer happy and you want him to buy more products.. so it's in your best interest to lower your currency value or increase the consumer's buying power.

This is why I do short term trades (few seconds) I never risk any long-term trades because I have no way of predicting where a currency will be after a few weeks or months.

Music_Producer

Dec 8, 2006, 08:00 AM

Ok, half an hour to go for the NFP. Remember to trade a small lot, this thing whipsaws.. and you can lose quite a bit if the spike goes the opposite way (due to revisions or just plain insanity) I have considered not trading this report quite a few times, but I think I'll jump in.. simply for the adrenaline rush!

Music_Producer

Dec 8, 2006, 08:35 AM

25 pips baby!!!! :D :D :D Man, NOW I wish I had traded a bigger lot.. heh! Good week.. very good week. How did you guys do?

PS - GBP showing strength but keeps getting smacked down. I am so tempted to trade on these spikes.. but that can wipe out my profits so I just shut the platform down.

nhallmark

Dec 8, 2006, 08:43 AM

I just watched it. I wanted to trade but it freaks out like you said.

Thanks for the elaboration on that article, Music_Producer. It makes more
sense now.

I guess Im going to watch US consumer sentiment at 9am and then Im done for
the week.

Music_Producer

Dec 8, 2006, 08:59 AM

Yeah, look at where it is now.. GBP/USD went up by more than a 100 pips after 15 minutes (100 pips in 12 minutes)!! Hence, trade for only a few seconds.. not more. Obviously some banks who didn't want their GBP/USD trades to get stopped out.. stepped in and bought a ton of GBP. Geez, they must have bought millions to make that spike go up by 100 pips.

The NFP this time though, wasn't that crazy as it usually is.

nhallmark

Dec 8, 2006, 09:22 AM

I was watching EUR/USD but I just compared the charts and theyre roughly the same, so I guess it doesnt matter either way.

The NFP this time though, wasn't that crazy as it usually is.

Yeah, it was just crazy at first. Every time I thought "oh i should sell but it could go up" it did, and then back down, up, etc. and it was about 5 pips every time. glad I didnt trade. Im learning not to trust my "instincts" with this and its wierd because every time I trade on logic, I make make money and when I trade on "feeling" I lose money-every time. -just like you said at the beginning of this thread.

~Shard~

Dec 8, 2006, 09:39 AM

Urgh, how frustrating! But what a rush... :D

Well, I experienced my first “requote” with CMC this morning – and honestly, I’m not faulting them, as things were moving at stupid speeds this morning. ;) Anyway, I traded the EUR/USD and GBP/USD (perhaps biting off more than I could chew...) Made money on the EUR/USD (of course) however my SELL order didn’t take on the GBP/USD to close out my trade, and it just happened to be when it was on one of the initial down swings! :eek: So, instead of bagging a few pips (this was all before things sky-rocketed afterwards) I was down on that trade. And then, honestly, a bit of panic set in – my trade wasn’t closed when it should have been, it was now dropping since it was actually still open, and I needed to bring up a new trade window as I saw my money going down each second! :o I closed out the trade and luckily only ended up down $350. But, this wiped out my profits from my EUR/USD trade. :( Normally this wouldn’t bug me as much, however it’s more frustrating than anything since the currency pairs spiked huge afterwards (100 pips!) If only I would have stayed in my GBP/USD trade I would have made my loss back and then some! ;) But, hindsight is always 20/20, and it could have just as easily gone the other way.

I did have a fun ride on the EUR/USD afterwards though, and made back some of my loss - I rode it from 280 to about 312 and got the f*ck out of Dodge. I was only trading a $50K lot at that time though to minimize my risk, as I know trading those spikes is chaotic at best.

So, as I said, a bit frustrating since I know I could have made way more money, but there’s always next time. ;)

Oh, and I was only initially trading $50K GBP/USD and $100K EUR/USD – small lot sizes in case, well, things like this happen. :o ;) But, I’m getting more and more experienced each trade, am learning each time and am fine with having a few losses initially if it will make me better (and profitable) in the long run. It’s all about attitude and not letting your emotions get the better of you.

If something is worth doing, it’s worth doing wrong initially so that you can learn how to do it right. :cool:

Music_Producer

Dec 8, 2006, 06:18 PM

~Shard~

Dec 8, 2006, 08:39 PM

Phew.. you didn't get slaughtered that bad Shard.. you could have been pulled down a 100 pips.. believe me, NFP reports are nuts.

Seriously though, NFP should not be traded. Not even with small lots. It's not worth risking all the profits made on other trades, and then wiping them out with one NFP trade. I have seen it happen every time.. NFP moves are always wild. People who 'straddle' get their stop losses hit within the first 2 seconds.. all the time. I got lucky that my order was accepted and I got out fast (and that it didn't spike up fast enough)

Why trade something so volatile when there are so many other easy trades? :)

Yeah, as I said, I chock it up to experience - perhaps I will just be an observer next month. :o ;) As you say, when there are easier trades out there, it's probably best just to stick to those. :cool:

So what's on your radar screen for next week? UK PPI/CPI? FOMC Meeting on Tuesday? (How do you think that will go?) US Sales and CPI later in the week? I'll also be watching the OPEC meeting Thursday...

GnarleyMarley87

Dec 8, 2006, 09:09 PM

~Shard~

Dec 8, 2006, 09:50 PM

What would be the best place to practice forex? forex.com? I've been "virtual trading" with optionsXpress for about a year now. I really want to start for real, but am just a little hesitant. I'm not too sure about what I'm doing. I need some confidence. Anyone got any suggestions?

You can practice right on Oanda (http://www.oanda.com/) if you like. Just set up a practice account and they will fund your account with $100K in play money (or some stupid amount) and there you go! As has been said many times in this thread though, I cannot stress enough how you have to treat that play money as real money - your real money. Only then will you truly benefit from practice trading. Don't do anything in your practice account that you wouldn't do with your own hard-earned money. Trust me, it will benefit you in the long run. :cool:

And if you have any questions which have not been answered in this thread yet, feel free to post them and we'll do our best to answer them. :)

GnarleyMarley87

Dec 8, 2006, 10:00 PM

You can practice right on Oanda (http://www.oanda.com/) if you like. Just set up a practice account and they will fund your account with $100K in play money (or some stupid amount) and there you go! As has been said many times in this thread though, I cannot stress enough how you have to treat that play money as real money - your real money. Only then will you truly benefit from practice trading. Don't do anything in your practice account that you wouldn't do with your own hard-earned money. Trust me, it will benefit you in the long run. :cool:

And if you have any questions which have not been answered in this thread yet, feel free to post them and we'll do our best to answer them. :)

Awesome man. Thanks a lot. I've made close to $4,000 in "vurtual" money with optionsXpress. I kind of had an idea of what I was doing, but not really. I'd just like to make a nice little side income. I go to school full-time and have a part time job on the weekends. I just got done paying my Spring tuition today and my checking account is looking a little bare. I'd like to use a good majority of the money I pull in from my fairly well paying pt to invest a little. Still have enough left so that even if I don't succed at first I won't be hurting too bad. Anyway, thanks again.:)

~Shard~

Dec 8, 2006, 10:38 PM

Not a problem at all.

Again though I cannot stress how careful and disciplined you have to be when doing this type of trading. Many people make lots of money in their practice accounts because they are a little more cavalier about things and aren't treating things seriously enough. And I'm not saying that this is the case with you, but I do want to warn you that forex trading isn't easy - the only easy part is losing money. And it does concern me when you say you "kind of had an idea of what you were doing" - to me, that sets off a huge red flag. I would suggest being a bit more careful, honest and smarter with your trades. I only say this because I don't want to see you get margin called. :cool:

Further to this, if you are still unsure of many aspects of forex trading, if you do not understand basic economics or financial models and theories, then I would advise you not to put your own money on the line. In general, whether it's this type of investing or playing around on the stock market, it basically ends up being educated gambling, and with that in mind you should never put more on the line than you're willing to lose. (It's what I do at the poker tables as well.) In your situation, you'll have to decide how much that is - obviously myself and Music_Producer are in a different financial situation than yourself, so please bear that in mind.

You also need to identify your risk tolerance and how well you can avoid becoming emotionally affected by high-pressure trading. It's not easy, trust me. :cool:

I would recommend you read this entire thread for starters, but also do a lot of your own research as well and become educated. Trying a practice account is definitely the best way to start.

And as I said, if you have questions and so forth, just let us know. I am not trying to lecture you or scare you off - I am simply looking out for your best interests. :cool:

GnarleyMarley87

Dec 9, 2006, 12:26 AM

~Shard~

Dec 9, 2006, 12:33 AM

Once again, thanks Shard. I'll be the first to admit I'm not the most educated person when it comes to investing. I do have a business oriented mind and some common sense if that helps. I think I'm just going to stick to the practicing for a few more months and see where I am financially and then reconsider doing it for real.

Your welcome, thanks for heeding my advice and not taking offense. ;) It sounds like you're approaching things the right way. Just have patience, practice for a few months as you say (or however long it takes) and continue to follow along in this thread - as you can tell, we post our trading experiences here on a frequent basis.

And don't get too discouraged either - you have to start somewhere and we were all beginners at some point. Although I have been investing in stocks, commodities, CDs, trusts, you name it, for many years now and am fairly experienced with them, I'm constantly learning - and as for forex, well, I just started a few months ago myself! ;) :D :cool:

Music_Producer

Dec 9, 2006, 04:23 AM

Gnarley.. open a real account with $50.. not more. Make that into $100 - no rush .. take your own time. But, keep practicing till you get it done.. even if it means investing $50 multiple times. If you can't make that $50 into $100.. then analyze what you are doing wrong and work on it to make it right.

Don't buy forex books, don't listen to other people's advice regarding what they think will happen to the Euro at 2.15 pm because their gut tells them, don't even trade according to what UBS or Barclay's or Bloomberg or whatever analyst recommends.

See the news, decide accordingly.. and trade. Simple. You have a choice - to either sit in front of a computer screen all day long.. and trading and losing.. or .. by fluke, making a profit. Or you can trade at news time.. make your money in a couple of seconds and live your life. :)

I've read stories about people having 5 monitor setups with various charts and graphical stuff.. makes it look like a space shuttle control room! I have used one computer, with 2 monitors (simply because i don't like stuff cluttered up) On one monitor is the news screen, and the other is the trading window. I don't even have a chart open. The only time I have ever opened charts was *after* trading.. to see how the currency moved, take a screenshot.. etc. Happy trading!

~Shard~

Dec 9, 2006, 02:00 PM

Sound advice Music_Producer (hmm, I suppose that was a bad pun now that I think of it...) - that's an excellent method of learning without risking your shirt. Keep in mind though, Gnarley, that you're playing with margin, and that is a double-edged sword. Sure, maybe you'll only have $50 in your account, but that could quickly turn into a $500 loss if you are not careful - please, don't get margin called. :o ;) :cool:

Music_Producer

Dec 9, 2006, 03:28 PM

Oops.. forgot to mention that.. Shard's right.. make that $50 into $100 - $2 at a time! Not in one trade obviously :)

Toreador93

Dec 9, 2006, 06:18 PM

~Shard~

Dec 9, 2006, 08:55 PM

Hi everyone! I found this thread a few weeks ago, read the entire thing (!), and have been watching it ever since. I briefly looked at FOREX a few months ago, but couldn't find any good explanations for trading techniques, etc. This thread has been immensely helpful in explaining things, and pointing out some other website which may help. I've opened up a practice Oanda account, but haven't been able to practice any news trades due to class schedules.

Now, I'm wondering about this last statement:
"Sure, maybe you'll only have $50 in your account, but that could quickly turn into a $500 loss if you are not careful - please, don't get margin called."

I thought FOREX brokers had a built-in safety which prevented one from losing more money than they have in their account. In the above example, if your trade took your account under $0, it would automatically close the trade - as they can't expect someone to pay money they don't have. And I imagine collection agencies would be a hassle.

Again, thank you all for such invaluable information!

I'm glad you have found this thread to be helpful - that's primarily what it's here for!

As for the margin call, oh no, you can definitely lose your shirt. If a broker has some sort of "safety net" in place, well, okay, perhaps that will help (it would depend on the broker I guess) but trust me, a broker will have no problems whatsoever in liquidating your other positions to cover a margin call or ask you to deposit additional funds to cover your loss. And if you don't, you'll be in a world of financial and legal hurt. Why do you think stock traders were jumping off rooftops in 1987? :cool:

Music_Producer

Dec 10, 2006, 04:37 AM

Toreador.. if you have $50 in your account and you make a couple of bad trades with high margin.. you will keep losing till you probably have $10 left (because even that's not enough to make a trade with a high margin) For e.g.

Say I have $50 and I trade EUR/USD at a 50:1 margin and buy 1000 units of EUR/USD at 1.3197. I entered the trade with the hopes of making a profit i.e eur/usd would go up.. but instead, it goes down.. way down. When it hits 1.28 I get a margin call.. i.e. my open position is automatically closed for a loss of $37. If the EUR/USD dipped further than 1.28 then you would probably go in a negative balance.. which you obviously don't have.. and they won't collect that from you.

So they'll close the trade when the loss is precariously close to your account balance. I did the same mistake when i first started trading. I had no idea what 100:1 margin meant or whatever. I started with $400 on a forex account that had 400:1 margin. So I was excited and thought 'oh wow! 400 to 1.. that means with 400 bucks i can buy 160000 $ worth of currency! woo hoo!!'

Yeah.. woo hoo.. the minute i went in a loss of like 20 pips.. boom.. my position was closed and i lost $300. :p I think I spent the rest of the day going "WTF? WTF? WTF? WTF?" and driving around town with a blank look on my face.

Basically.. I would trade like this.. if I have $100 in my account, I would trade with 1000 units at the most. If I had $1000.. I would go to 10,000.. and so on. Just multiply by ten (this is for eur/usd.. gbp/usd would be a lesser amount) This is till you can practice with a real live account.. whether you make a 1 cent profit or a $1000 profit.. profit is profit. You will learn how you made that profit, and why you made it. So it's good to start off small. If you are a first timer with a $100 deposit.. start with trading only 100 units, not 1000.

Once I started making profits with a few cents.. i moved on to making profits with a few dollars. Yes, I would stay up all night to make one trade.. to nab $3. Sounds like a lot of work to make a measly 3 bucks.. but that gave me the experience that I have now to make profits of hundreds of dollars.. even thousands. Now I know why NFP trades are volatile.. why the GBP can get an unexpected rate hike or cut.. how currency speeches work.. and so on.

So when you see Forex brokers offering "400:1 margin!" .. be careful. You can easily get wiped out with one bad trade. Also, don't sign up with brokers that ask for a minimum trading size like 100,000 units or whatever. Safest bet is to stick with Oanda.. you can play with even $10 and trade 100 units and practice.

~Shard~

Dec 10, 2006, 09:55 AM

Once again, good advice Music_Producer. I'd like to stress though that, as I said, brokerages can indeed ask you to deposit additional funds to cover losses in some cases and it's not like all you can lose is your $50 initial investment (as an example.) Just look at what happens with short-selling on the markets and then good old companies like Amaranth. :eek: :cool:

Toreador93

Dec 10, 2006, 10:21 AM

Well thanks a lot guys! I'm glad I asked before I went ahead and lost all my money, and my shirt!

Keep up the good work!

~Shard~

Dec 10, 2006, 10:48 AM

Well thanks a lot guys! I'm glad I asked before I went ahead and lost all my money, and my shirt!

Keep up the good work!

No problem.

And yes, it especially sucks if you have a nice shirt. :p

Hoef

Dec 10, 2006, 01:50 PM

~Shard~

Dec 10, 2006, 04:05 PM

guys, are you aware of have you experience with a "mobile" trading solution? I will be traveling a lot pretty soon and hate the prospect of not having access to markets when I want to ..... I guess I am addicted :D

I believe CMC Markets has some type of mobile platform that allows for trading on your cell phone via a lightweight client, but I would really question the reliability of such a service. All you need is your wireless service dropping a packet or two or dropping service all together, even just for a second, and you're royally screwed. :o

Music_Producer

Dec 10, 2006, 08:04 PM

Haha Shard @ Amaranth.. morons! Sorry I didn't reply to your earlier question about the trades coming up this week.. me and the wife just adopted a kitty.. she's a year old and her name's Paris.. will post on her in another thread ..so been busy with that :p Also, i think they let you trade on margin and then take money from you.. when it comes to stocks.. not forex.. but then i could be wrong :confused: But it's best not to never come near any margin call.. and never put most of your money in one trade anyway.

Yeah, I'll be trading the cpi, ppi reports for sure, the us trade balance, interest rate statement ( i feel they might raise the rates.. just a feeling) gbp retail sales, etc.

~Shard~

Dec 10, 2006, 08:17 PM

Haha Shard @ Amaranth.. morons!

Yep - makes me think we could run our own hedge fund better... ;) :cool:

Sorry I didn't reply to your earlier question about the trades coming up this week.. me and the wife just adopted a kitty.. she's a year old and her name's Paris.. will post on her in another thread ..so been busy with that :p

Cool, send me a link to the other thread when you post some pictures. :)

Also, i think they let you trade on margin and then take money from you.. when it comes to stocks.. not forex.. but then i could be wrong :confused:

It is definitely the case with stocks, I know that one (although as I said perhaps different brokers handle things differently...) - if you read CMC's fine print wrt margin (at least as far as share CFDs go) I believe they comment on this very thing. At any rate:

But it's best not to never come near any margin call.. and never put most of your money in one trade anyway.

Yep. ;)

Yeah, I'll be trading the cpi, ppi reports for sure, the us trade balance, interest rate statement ( i feel they might raise the rates.. just a feeling) gbp retail sales, etc.

Man, if they raise rates the EUR and GBP will get hit hard, no? Especially because I believe consensus right now is not for a rate hike, is it not? I haven't been following it too closely as of late... I'll be at work during the announcement, so I'll see if I can swing something so I can keep an eye on it... ;)

Should be a fun (and hopefully profitable) week! :cool:

Music_Producer

Dec 12, 2006, 04:12 AM

The AUD/JPY carry traders are in full swing right now.. AUD/JPY has smashed through the 91.85 point. The key to a successful carry trade is to hold on to your positions and not be scared by the potential loss (if you sell at a lower price) If you are going to enter a carry trade, you need to prepare youself and be ready for a 1000 pip drop (it doesn't happen.. but prepare anyway) With a good interest rate differential, the interest positive currency will always be pushed up. Banks and hedge funds put billions of their $ in this carry trade, so when the pair goes down.. they sweat a lot more than you and I do.

Coming up today is UK CPI, US trade balance and US interest rate statement (if rates are cut or hiked - do not trade if nothing is changed) Good luck!

Music_Producer

Dec 12, 2006, 04:16 AM

Hey Shard, the only reason the rates would be hiked is because of the recent dollar slide. It was kinda like a wake up call to the Feds. Most likely the rates won't be hiked.. but what the Feds will do.. is be hawkish on the US$.

They will talk about inflation being a risk and so on. Note that the GBP has risen against the USD by a 1000 pips :eek: from mid-november. That's a huge spike in a couple of days. If it breaks the 2.0 barrier, you might see a catastrophic dollar sell-off.

So it's ok if the EUR and GBP take a beating (temporarily) In fact, the ECB (euro bank) has been doing nothing but talk about a high euro is bad for the economy.. blah blah.. trying to push the Euro down. Everyone is waiting to sell the dollar, so they need any encouraging news to push it back up.

Music_Producer

Dec 12, 2006, 04:44 AM

Massive slippage on CMC.. traded the GBP/USD for the UK CPI report.. initially my buy order went through for a profit of 28 pips. I was happy, clicked on 'sell' to close the order. Nothing happened. Waited a few seconds and my profit in $ was still moving.. so I knew the trade wasn't closed yet. I clicked 'sell' again. Tried one last time.. and then it executed.

I checked my profit.. 26 pips.. ok.. as long as it's not a loss or something stupid like 6 pips. So I was checking the news, etc.. and after a minute I come back to the platform and I was bloody shocked to find out that my 'sell' trades had gone through!! :mad: I quickly closed them for a loss of 7 pips eventually. F@cking unbelievable. I hate it when I do things right, but the platform screws me over.

~Shard~

Dec 12, 2006, 07:29 AM

Yikes, sorry to hear about that Music_Producer! :eek: :( That's really unfortunate and frustrating - especially when you "did it right" the first time. It appears as though no platform is perfect. :o

Music_Producer

Dec 12, 2006, 07:56 AM

Actually Shard.. there are platforms that work perfectly as they should.. but they're only for fund managers and banks. You need to deposit a minimum amount (I'm sure in the millions) You can then sign up with platforms used by Bank of America, Citibank, etc.. where there is no dealing desk or any kind of crap. Maybe someday we'll do that :p

I also traded GBP/USD on Oanda (very small lot) and I noticed that when i clicked on 'sell' the order didn't go through right away.. took a few seconds.. but it gave me the exact price that was quoted. CMC's platform can sure use a lot of improvements.. for e.g. if there is slippage.. or there is a pending order.. flash it on the screen!! They shouldn't revert back to the order window and let you enter a new order if the previous one hasn't been executed.

I recovered from the 7 pip loss by trading the European ZEW sentiment .. phew! But I'd better trade cautiously for the US trade balance report. The GBP should have skyrocketed today by atleast 50-80 pips.. but it didn't.. and it came down later. I am guessing this is because of today's US interest rate decision.. the markets want an idea of how the Feds are going to strengthen/weaken the dollar's image. Hence I also see any reaction to the US trade balance data as very temporary.

Music_Producer

Dec 12, 2006, 08:33 AM

Well, looks like CMC made it up to me :D Nice 31 pip profit on the GBP/USD - Trade balance (deficit) came out much lower than expected. I can sleep peacefully now!

nhallmark

Dec 12, 2006, 10:16 AM

~Shard~

Dec 12, 2006, 10:42 AM

Well, looks like CMC made it up to me. Nice 31 pip profit on the GBP/USD - Trade balance (deficit) came out much lower than expected. I can sleep peacefully now!

Wow, nice one! Glad to see you ending up ahead when all was said and done. ;)

And man, you're quick - I have to work on my speed I guess. :o ;) I traded the news as well but since I thought there wouldn't be much movement, I decided to use EUR/USD instead of GBP/USD. I know the GBP/USD moves more (on average) than the EUR/USD, but I thought that the EUR/USD might be better for me this time around since it's a 2 pip spread and not a 3 pip spread (although I realize it's not that big a difference in the grand scheme of things... ;)) Anywho, I got in and out quick, but still missed the majority of the spike - made a big old 2 pips haha! :D The funniest thing though is that I was only trading a $100K lot size, so now I have no idea what I'm going to spend my big $21 profit on... :D I'm not complaining though - a small gain is always better than a loss of any kind!

Further to this though, do you know if Oanda's news service reports differently whether you are using a real account or a game account? Because for me, it seems as though the resultant spike occurs pretty much instantaneously (if not even a bit ahead!) of when the news flashes come through for me on Oanda - it really gives me zero time to process the data properly. It just seems like the news should be coming a bit quicker, otherwise I almost find myself trading the spike rather than the #s, which isn't right. I thought the news service would be the same, but is there a chance that for their actual "paying customers" Oanda delivers a higher quality of service (i.e. faster news reports) to them first, then the game accounts? I ask, because I have seen a couple times where Oanda will disconnect game accounts during high volume periods, presumably to be preferential to their real clients.

Is tradethenews that much better? Is it worth the monthly subscription? Or is it only midly quicker? (I realize we're talking fractions of seconds here, but still...) Just trying to figure out the best way to capitalize on things. :)

Lastly, don't worry too much nhallmark - as you say, you're learning, and the best way to learn is by doing. And as long as you learn from your mistakes, it's all good. :cool: You will see this happen on almost every trade actually, and it's not necessarily tied into a certain factor all the time - quite simply, after a huge spike, there is almost always a natural (albeit sometimes brief) correction. So, if you're late to the game, you may get in at the peak of the spike and the trend will reverse. Just keep practicing and you'll get better. I've gotten better myself over the couple months I've been doing this but still don't seem to have the lightning-fast dexterity of Music_Producer who can get in and out in a couple seconds... ;) :)

Music_Producer

Dec 12, 2006, 04:23 PM

Shard.. that lightning-fast dexterity is a result of years of examinations I had to pass (in medical school) You just get so used to answering rapidly and make quick decisions.. lol.. I think it's finally paying off now!!

Oanda news is super slow compared to tradethenews..I don't think there's a difference in their news speed for real or demo accounts.

Sign up for a tradethenews trial.. and when you install the software - there are 2 sections. One is text, and then there are audio channels. I prefer the audio.. that comes out 2 seconds before the text.

If the trial suits you.. then it's worth the monthly fee because you're trading 100k lots. Even more worth it, obviously, when you move on to higher quantity trading.

And I can give you a lot of ideas on how to spend that $21 :D

Music_Producer

Dec 12, 2006, 04:28 PM

I closed at a loss of 8 pips on the USD trade deficit. I got the news at the end of the spike, so I sold EUR/USD, then it reversed. I think it reversed because of the good news with the EUR earlier this morning and because of the US interest rate announcement today...and because I got the news late so I got in late.

But, Im learning!

Yup.. well done! (Your logical analysis of what happened) Here's one more thing that actually pushed the GBP and EUR up by about 40 pips ( i think at about 4 am pst)

Good old Greenspan had a few nasty comments about the dollar. He said the US should be prepared for 'years of dollar weakness' and that everyone in the world should not invest in only dollars.. they should invest in other currencies too..so the $ took a beating. Man, that guy is so honest.

So take the Zew sentiment (for the Eur or UK CPI for the GBP) and greenspan's comments.. and by the way.. read my posts above (before i traded today) I have mentioned that any reaction to the US trade balance data will be *temporary* :) In other words, get in and get out fast because the spike will reverse.

nhallmark

Dec 12, 2006, 05:10 PM

.. and by the way.. read my posts above (before i traded today) I have mentioned that any reaction to the US trade balance data will be *temporary* In other words, get in and get out fast because the spike will reverse.

Yeah, I read that after I traded, unfortunately. Oh well. Did tradethenews report greenspan's comments? I wasn't up that early. Are you guys trading US retail sales tomorrow?

Veritas&Equitas

Dec 12, 2006, 05:17 PM

Hey, I've just been going through this whole thread and I'm really interested. The problem is, I'm of limited means. I graduated college a few years ago, and am currently in law school, but I have only a bit of money to throw around (around $5,000). Now, I was an economics major in college, but have never gone out and traded on my own...the only way I've made money is through working hours in IT or eBaying various random decent deals I can make a profit on, but nothing major (most I make is like $400-500, usually once a month or so).

The thing is, I'm a decently smart guy, yet I want to do something with my money. I'm not afraid of risk ATM (I'm young, and only have a few grand to play around with), so I don't care what I get into, I'm just looking to invest/get into something where I can make a profit with some hard @$$ work. I'm willing to bust my balls for whatever it may be; I'm a hard worker, and am really interested in this.

Now, I understand that FOREX may be a little over my head, given my lack of experience & funds, but I'm wondering if you guys have any other ideas or could point me in any direction to something that I could put my time/effort into to accomplish what I want to accomplish? I'm not asking for miracles here, but hopefully making a somewhat steady 17-30% profit margin on something. Granted, I wouldn't always make it, probably lose some sometimes, but in that general area. I've had friends that have sold poker chips for sweet money ($30,000 in a couple months), and I've sold some high end electronics on eBay for 25-35% profit margins a few times, but nothing really that is consistent. Any ideas would REALLY be appreciated! Thanks guys!

~Shard~

Dec 12, 2006, 05:36 PM

Shard.. that lightning-fast dexterity is a result of years of examinations I had to pass (in medical school) You just get so used to answering rapidly and make quick decisions.. lol.. I think it's finally paying off now!!

Nice! I guess I have no excuse then, as I'm a musician and you'd think I'd have that adeptness as well with respect to fast fingers, quick recognition, trasnmitting commands from brain to fingers... ;) I'll just keep practicing. :D

Oanda news is super slow compared to tradethenews..I don't think there's a difference in their news speed for real or demo accounts.

Phew! I had been thinking that maybe I was just slow! I'll try a quicker news service and hopefully that will make things easier for me. Kay, thanks, that makes me feel a bit better. Now at leats I know I was somewhat handicapped in a way since I was trying to trade off Oanda's news service. ;o ;)

Sign up for a tradethenews trial.. and when you install the software - there are 2 sections. One is text, and then there are audio channels. I prefer the audio.. that comes out 2 seconds before the text.

I think I'll do that - thanks. :cool:

And I can give you a lot of ideas on how to spend that $21 :D

Haha, we'll it's up to $53 now - made 3 pips on a $100K lot on the interest rate announcement this afternoon. :D

Music_Producer

Dec 12, 2006, 06:54 PM

~Shard~

Dec 12, 2006, 09:57 PM

Musician? Cool! What do you play? I can play the keyboards.. but never been formally trained, can just play by ear. I had a hard time convincing my parents (typical indian doctors) that there is a living to be made by making music rather than being a doctor. They didn't believe me till I showed them my first paycheck from a jingle I composed.

Now, they don't believe me that you can make money from trading forex.. :D

Heh heh - way to prove them wrong. ;)

I play clarinet and used to play sax. I played in the Symphony Orchestra here (one of the top ones in Canada, actually) from when I was 12 until I was 19, then my Engineering degree got in the way. ;) I was called by my old professor (the principal clarinet in the Orchestra) a few years ago wondering if I could fill in on short notice, and lucky for me, it was just like riding a bike, and I was back in shape in no time! Ever since I've been playing with the Symphony again in my spare time and doing my "Engineer stuff" during the day to pay the bills and such - the best of both worlds!

Throw some investing and now forex trading into the mix and I've got nothing to complain about!

And since we're somewhat off-topic already ;) I actually used to make music myself with a friend of mine. He has since gone on to do it much more seriously, and even has a small film score under his belt along with a couple of CDs now, but back in the day we used to sit around in his parent's basement and make up all sorts of crazy stuff. All electronica - we used tracker programs, MIDI, a TR808 (I think it was), samplers, and then my buddy on the guitar and keyboards. We'd make all sorts of mixes - it was great fun. Now he's into Fruity Loops studio, other programs I don't know ;) and all these professional sample packages (http://www.soundsonline.com/home.php) which cost hundreds of dollars. :D He recently did the mastering and mixing for another friend of mine (whom I played in the Orchestra with) and his band here in town and the CD turned out amazing.

Anywho, now you know a little more about me. Feel free to comment and/or share more about yourself as well if you like. :) Or if you prefer we can continue this off-topic discussion via PMs or e-mail as not to hijack this wonderful thread too much. ;) :D

nhallmark

Dec 12, 2006, 10:32 PM

I guess I'll go ahead and confess that I'm a musician too. I just play guitar though.

I was in a band in high school(only two years ago) but that didn't work out, so I had to get serious and Ive pretty much locked myself in the back room of my house for two years getting material together and Im almost ready to go...or I will be January 1st.

I write drums with Reason, the lay down the guitars, bass, and vocals in pro tools. Unfortunately, I've got to do it all on a dell because of the money issue.

Veritas&Equitas, I would recommend forex, definetely. It's damn fun and this thread pretty much explains all you need to know. Also, building websites can bring in some money. It's more work than forex but there's a lot of people that make very substantial money from websites. I use Sitesell (http://buildit.sitesell.com/Nathan11.html) for mine.

~Shard~

Dec 12, 2006, 11:28 PM

Also, building websites can bring in some money. It's more work than forex but there's a lot of people that make very substantial money from websites. I use Sitesell (http://buildit.sitesell.com/Nathan11.html) for mine.

Yeah, there is definitely good money in building websites. One of my friends in the States is one of the head designers for 2 Advanced Studios (http://www.2advanced.com/), which does some awesome work. Specifically, he was one of the main designers for their "version 2 homepage (http://v3.2a-archive.com/flashindex.htm)" (they're up to version 5 now, I think). Slick stuff - it's an art when you get to the level they are at.... :cool:

Music_Producer

Dec 13, 2006, 07:09 AM

~Shard~

Dec 13, 2006, 10:14 AM

Shard.. you play the sax and clarinet? Damn, i'm jealous! (wind instr+electronica reminds me of house music in paris) I've always wanted to play a wind instrument.. and nhallmark.. I've wanted to play the guitar. I tried, but I gave up.. I got too bored of only one 'sound' coming out of a guitar.. so i immersed myself into keyboards. Shard, btw.. I make a lot of electronica .. i'll pm you (and i'm bloody more jealous that you guys had a tr 808!!)

Cool, that’s awesome that you’re into electronica as well. The stuff we did was several years ago now (well, we started back in ’93) so it’s a little rough by today’s standards (a lot of it sounds like cheesy video game music I’m sure! ;) :D) but we enjoyed creating it nonetheless. As I said, my buddy has since moved onto more professional projects and he’s doing well from what I’ve heard (literally and figuratively ;) :cool: )

But yes, definitely PM me at some point and we can chat more. If you have an FTP, iDisk or some other way which we could txfer some files let me know and we could swap tunes! :)

If I get my tunes up on itunes one day, please donate 99 cents of your forex profit for my tracks It's obviously not about the money for me.. but that someone is buying my stuff and getting painful chest symptoms while listening to it.. that's thrilling

Absolutely! Just let me know when they’re up there. ;)

Ok, so back on track.. just wondering. How come online stock brokers like Scottrade, TD Waterhouse, etc don't provide forex services? Wouldn't they attract a lot more customers?

Yeah, I’ve wondered this too. They honestly just seem to be “behind the times” so to speak. When I compare the power that a platform like CMC has when it comes to stocks especially, the online discount brokerages are lacking far behind. It almost seems like they are light versions of trading platforms. I guess not everyone needs an industrial strength platform but those online ones definitely seem watered down. The quotes aren’t real-time, the bid/ask spreads are greater, the commissions are higher… I guess it’s just the target market their aiming for – for many people that’s good enough I guess. Better than their broker... :rolleyes:

So it’s no surprise to me that they’re not into forex and such. Rightly or wrongly they probably believe it’s too foreign (haha “foreign”, forex... :rolleyes: ) for the average investor to comprehend and due to the whole margin thing, they view it as too risky. After all, for CMC at least you have to be an accredited investor, not just any Joe Blow. Plus, the brokerage houses would need to support an entirely different trading system, have support for it, yadda yadda. Up here, Scotiabank has been progressive by allowing more freedom in trading options and so forth, as even that is quite limited with other institutions.

But yeah, I think they could – it must just not have a positive business case for them. Or perhaps “they” don’t want everyone to know about forex and want people to assume it’s some high stress rocket science which only Wall Street gurus can comprehend. ;) Plus, to be honest, I don’t know how many people would actually do it. None of my friends know anything about forex trading and even my broker (which I hardly use anymore…) knows nothing about it. The only other person I’ve been able to speak to about it intelligently is a friend of mine who is a bond trader for a capital management firm. (Oh, and he’ll be a good recruit for our hedge fund/trading company whenever we set it up. :D)

nhallmark

Dec 13, 2006, 12:42 PM

.. and nhallmark.. I've wanted to play the guitar. I tried, but I gave up.. I got too bored of only one 'sound' coming out of a guitar..

I was that way when I first started playing, but now I like the challenge of coming up with new sounds on a guitar, through a combination of pedals and rack units.

If I get my tunes up on itunes one day, please donate 99 cents of your forex profit for my tracks :D It's obviously not about the money for me.. but that someone is buying my stuff and getting painful chest symptoms while listening to it.. that's thrilling :p

If you need a distributor, go with tunecore (www.tunecore.com). They just charge you upload fees and they DONT take a cut of your sales.

Anyway, how did you guys do on US retail sales this morning. I missed the spike but I made 11 pips on the small correction,(which I wouldnt do with real money, so I probably shouldnt have done it).

~Shard~

Dec 13, 2006, 02:38 PM

Anyway, how did you guys do on US retail sales this morning. I missed the spike but I made 11 pips on the small correction,(which I wouldnt do with real money, so I probably shouldnt have done it).

I just watched this one. Honestly, I wasn't expecting the positive surprise, so by the time I confirmed the #s the downward spike had already occurred and it was too late to trade.

And I don't want to come across the wrong way, but you are right, you shouldn't have done that trade. After all, are you trading the news using facts and logic or are you trading on speculation? (i.e. "I think this curve should correct now...") Because if it's the latter, then you might as well just go play some roulette at a casino - you're essentially betting that since a certain number has gone down lots, it will start to go up - not much scientific or logical about that.

You said it best - you wouldn't have done that with real money, so that basically defeats the purpose of practicing.

As we've said many times in this thread, you have to treat your practice account as real money - don't do anything you wouldn't do with your own money on the line. You have to be honest first and foremost.

Please accept this as constructive criticism and nothing more - I just don't want to see you lose money when you start for real. And as I said, if you want to just gamble on gut feel and whatnot, go ahead, but realize that you're removing all logical thought and reason from the process and you might as well get a monkey to randomly buy and sell for you instead. :cool:

nhallmark

Dec 13, 2006, 03:27 PM

Thanks, Shard. I wake up at 7am and the trades are usually at 7:30(central) so Im usually half asleep, but Im setting my alarm clock earlier every day so I can wake up before I trade...either way, that was the first time I've done that and it will definitely be the last.

Are you trading NZD retail sales this afternoon?

Music_Producer

Dec 13, 2006, 04:33 PM

Traded the US retail sales for 6 pips today.. could have made more than 45 but CMC 'slipped' :rolleyes: A positive number was actually expected because this was for November.. and we had Black Friday (thanksgiving shopping) plus it's the start of the holiday season shopping.. so yeah. Shucks, I should have sold GBP/USD before the report.. but then I'm always thinking of the risks and prefer to wait.

Shard, thanks for the explanation regarding online stock brokers and why they don't offer forex. Yeah, I remember when I used to trade stocks 4-5 years ago.. the platform was not at all efficient. I would get massive slippage all the time.. lol, so I shouldn't be complaining about forex platforms. They are much, much better compared to stock trading platforms.

I'm dying (literally) to get access to an institutional trading platform. I'm just so curious to see what kind of platforms they have, and how they execute. Would be fun to butt in and suggest 'May I trade for you and make $500,000?' See if they hire me on the spot :p

Music_Producer

Dec 13, 2006, 04:37 PM

And I don't want to come across the wrong way, but you are right, you shouldn't have done that trade. After all, are you trading the news using facts and logic or are you trading on speculation? (i.e. "I think this curve should correct now...") Because if it's the latter, then you might as well just go play some roulette at a casino - you're essentially betting that since a certain number has gone down lots, it will start to go up - not much scientific or logical about that.

Yeah, nhallmark remember that there are numerous opportunities for trading forex. When CMC doesn't execute my order.. sure I get pissed.. but I don't trade the following spikes. Simply because I would rather wait for 24 hours to trade again than make a loss.

Traders always do this.. they'll spend a week trading and making .. say.. a 100 pips total. And then they will trade the NFP report on friday. "Oh wow! NFP was excellent! Buy the $!!" If they enter the trade late, they still buy the $. And then a european bank steps in and sells massive amount of dollars.. and the traders lose those 100 pips they collected over the week.

If you miss the initial spike, just let it go (unless you get some additional news data) Yes, it's really hard to do that .. but that's what your practice account is there for. :)

Music_Producer

Dec 14, 2006, 04:40 AM

Ok, I am leaving CMC for good. They obviously have a 'dealing desk' and it seems that their goal is to provide slippage almost all the time (maybe because i am always profitable? hmm..)

I bagged 20 pips today on the GBP/USD (UK retail sales report) but.. I missed out a 40 pip profit. CMC took 46 seconds to respond to my 'sell' trigger. As shown in the attachment.. i bought gbp/usd at 1.9662 and immediately hit sell at 1.9692 (or 94) Nothing happened. I didn't hit 'sell' again because i knew this order was still pending. It finally let me sell after that unbearably long time (in the picture you can see buy at 9.30.02 am and sell at 9.30.48am)

64052

46 seconds is a bloody long time.. the spike could have easily reversed and I could have made a loss of 20 pips .. who knows?

Music_Producer

Dec 14, 2006, 04:49 AM

Shard, if we did open a hedge fund.. what broker would we use?! I am confident enough to trade 10 million lots .. but this obviously requires a broker that executes rightaway.

The one thing I don't understand about these idiots is.. that they make their profit on the spread anyway.. so why fleece the customer more? Bah.. I wonder if suing their asses will make them change their strategies.

nhallmark

Dec 14, 2006, 09:08 AM

I made 8 pips on the US import price index and unemployment claims. Oanda dropped the connection right when I sold(EUR/USD), so I logged in on the mac and closed immediately, making $84.

Oanda has been dropping the connection right in the middle of news time for a few days now. I hope they just do that to the game accounts and not the real ones.

Sorry to hear about your problems with CMC, Music_Producer. I dont have any experience with it myself, but my problems with oanda generate the same feelings of wanting to hit something(or sue something :p)

~Shard~

Dec 14, 2006, 02:34 PM

Ok, I am leaving CMC for good. They obviously have a 'dealing desk' and it seems that their goal is to provide slippage almost all the time (maybe because i am always profitable? hmm..)

That's too bad Music_Producer. At least you didn't end up losing a lot of money in the process, but regardless that kind of slippage isn't acceptable at all. :mad: Apologies, as I feel partly responsible for recommending CMC to you in the first place! :o It still meets my needs, but as my skill becomes more "refined" and perhaps if I trade quicker thanks to tools like the tradethenews service, perhaps I will experience deficiencies like that as well.

Shard, if we did open a hedge fund.. what broker would we use?! I am confident enough to trade 10 million lots .. but this obviously requires a broker that executes rightaway.

Exactly. Yeah, I don't know how we would go about that. I guess we'd need to research what the other hedge funds use - I honestly don't know what type of "industrial strength" tools those guys have, or how they have direct to-market access, or whatever they term it. Maybe I'll ask my bond trader friend what all they use.

And you know, I'm not sure about you, but I'm half-serious about doing something like that. We can PM further about it. :cool:

The one thing I don't understand about these idiots is.. that they make their profit on the spread anyway.. so why fleece the customer more? Bah.. I wonder if suing their asses will make them change their strategies.

Heh heh - I don't know how well that would go in court, but it would be fun to do! ;) :D How would you really prove though that you executed your SELL order 40 seconds before it was filled?

But yes, I don't know either why they would do this. Or, perhaps you get what you pay for and a platform such as CMC which is free (after a minimum account deposit) simply isn't as hardened as other platforms and its simply not a foolproof system - perhaps it can't handle split-second high volume trades during busy trading periods. Maybe it's like tradethenes versus Bloomberg news - if you want the best, you pay for it! I don't think it's unreasonable to expect no slippage (because it is possible, we know that), but again, if this is a platform for us "small fish" perhaps the powers that be feel it is "good enough". :rolleyes:

Music_Producer

Dec 14, 2006, 09:35 PM

Oh no Shard.. don't be silly! No need to apologize.. I have just had one loss (due to slippage) but all other trades have been profitable. I can't trade with Oanda because of the spreads.. they are just too much to handle.

In fact, I checked with a customer support rep at CMC, and they were surprised that the re-quote took so long to show up.. they said it shows up almost instantaneously. :confused: They also mentioned that if the same problem happened again, I should contact them and they will look into it. Very helpful support team indeed.

If you let other forex platforms' teams know that you're trading the news with them, they'll either close your account or give you a warning.. not CMC. I am going to trade with cmc today and see if the same thing happens. It might be a glitch in the software.. who knows?

Shard, if you don't mind me asking.. if you get a re-quote.. can you check and let me know how much time it takes for that re-quote window to show up? Thanks!

~Shard~

Dec 14, 2006, 09:45 PM

Oh no Shard.. don't be silly! No need to apologize.. I have just had one loss (due to slippage) but all other trades have been profitable. I can't trade with Oanda because of the spreads.. they are just too much to handle.

Alright, no worries then. ;) It's just that when I recommend something to someone, I want it to turn out well for them, that's all... :)

In fact, I checked with a customer support rep at CMC, and they were surprised that the re-quote took so long to show up.. they said it shows up almost instantaneously. :confused: They also mentioned that if the same problem happened again, I should contact them and they will look into it. Very helpful support team indeed.

That's good to hear. Yes, I've phoned their support desk a few times as well (even chatted with people at their FX dealing desk!) and they have always been nothing but helpful as well. The one guy explained Mark-to-market for me and how the interest is factored into the price differential when a carry position is rolled over - exactly what I needed to know!

If you let other forex platforms' teams know that you're trading the news with them, they'll either close your account or give you a warning.. not CMC. I am going to trade with cmc today and see if the same thing happens. It might be a glitch in the software.. who knows?

Let's hope that's all it was. And yes, CMC has been nothing but good for me s far, so knock on wood!

Shard, if you don't mind me asking.. if you get a re-quote.. can you check and let me know how much time it takes for that re-quote window to show up? Thanks!

Absolutely, of course I don't mind at all. I will definitely let you know if that happens to me- but let's hope not! ;) :D

So, any predictions on the US CPI tomorrow AM? The EUR and GBP have backed off a fair bit the past couple of days, do you think that will play a factor as well?

nhallmark

Dec 14, 2006, 10:11 PM

If you let other forex platforms' teams know that you're trading the news with them, they'll either close your account or give you a warning..

Um..is there something wrong with trading the news or is it just an ego thing with them?

Do you guys trade NZD at all? I've watched it on almost every report for the past two weeks now and maybe once it moved enough to trade. Today, NZD retail sales made NZD/USD move a whole pip! So, I guess its just not a good market?(for trading the news)

~Shard~

Dec 14, 2006, 10:21 PM

Um..is there something wrong with trading the news or is it just an ego thing with them?

Do you guys trade NZD at all? I've watched it on almost every report for the past two weeks now and maybe once it moved enough to trade. Today, NZD retail sales made NZD/USD move a whole pip! So, I guess its just not a good market?(for trading the news)

For whatever reason NZD isn't as popular a currency as others, so it probably isn't traded as much as a result I'm guessing. Plus, the spreads on it would be larger, making it less attractive to trade. That being said, it is technically an excellent carry trade candidate, especially against the yen. :cool:

nhallmark

Dec 15, 2006, 08:43 AM

Just traded US CPI and I made 4 pips. EUR/USD had been moving up quite a bit before the news, so when I saw the data I waited for the spike and then traded which, if I would have just traded the data like Im supposed to, I would have made 24 pips.

Thanks for the info on NZD, Shard. That makes sense. I've heard(or seen) you and Music_Producer talk about carry trading throughout this thread and Im sure I will learn more about it in the future, but right now Im barely learning to trade the news.(in other words, I dont quite understand it...yet!:p)

Music_Producer

Dec 15, 2006, 08:57 AM

Hey nhallmark.. I made 4 pips too! :D Slippage again, and re-quote from cmc took 40 seconds to show up. My initial 'buy' was at 1.9586.. had it executed at that price point.. I would have made 60 pips. Oh well, 4 pips is good (after accepting the re-quote at 1.9650!)

TIC report is next!

nhallmark

Dec 15, 2006, 09:13 AM

TIC sucked for me. I made 1/3 of a pip. I guess it didnt move that much because of the CPI data?

Also, by the numbers you gave, it looks like you traded GBP/USD? Is there a reason why you trade that vs. EUR/USD? It seems like the pound moves more but, it also seems that during news time, the euro is more stable. Just wondering what your take is...

~Shard~

Dec 15, 2006, 10:48 AM

I deifnitely need to get on tradethenews - that Oanda news service is too slow. I was waiting for the CPI news this morning, but the spike happeneed before the news was out, and I didn't want to trade based on assumption. ;) I technically could have got in but how was I to know if it would have been at the top of the spike or not? So, I didn't trade this morning, even though is was a good opportunity. :( ;) Ah well, there will always be more opportunities - that's what's great about forex trading! :D

nhallmark, read the rest of our comments in this thread on carry trading and if you have any questions let us know. The basics of it are that you find a currnecy pair which has a significant interest rate differential in your favor, such as AUD (6.25%) and JPY (0.25%). By going long on the currency (buying AUD, selling JPY) and using larger lots, you can make roughly that 6% differential on a daily basis in interest. So, you do the math - if you put $1M in the bank @ 6%/year, how much would you make in interest alone? ;) :D

And yes, your are correct, the GBP/USD has a higher beta than EUR/USD. It's the pair I prefer to trade as well as a result - the only downside is the extra pip (at least with CMC) in the spread. ;) :cool:

Slow week next week due to Christmas?

As I predicted, even though the DJIA30, NDAQ100 and S&P500 are all heavily overbought, etc. I doubt they will correct and enter the blow down phase until the new year due to profit-taking and the resultant tax implications. Then I'll be shorting like there's no tomorrow and taking full advantage of that beautiful thing called leverage. :D :cool:

tringo

Dec 15, 2006, 08:39 PM

I wouldn't mind trying something that would give me an edge on doing the travel that I want.

But my luck is bad. I could invest in a company that never has had a loss, and the stock has done double digits for 20 years (with no loss); and I would buy and the stock tanks in less than 6 months. :eek:

Let me guess. You bought Enron stock then. :p

Music_Producer

Dec 15, 2006, 09:10 PM

Shard, there were a couple of 'glitches' this morning regarding the reports. The empire manufacturing survey was actually released half an hour before.. due to a 'technical error'. It came out much better than exepected.. so the GBP dropped against the USD by 30-40 pips. Then, the cpi number.. I think some folks got the pre-release news from 'friends'.. and so you saw the USD dropping pretty quickly before the actual report came out.

I was quite tempted to get in, but didn't. Never know what can happen with these moves. And the TIC report wasn't that significant simply because the CPI came out unexpectedly low. The CPI is the most important number.

nhallmark.. haha.. 1/3 of a pip :p Oh, and don't forget that when you do a carry trade.. you have to take into account the profit/loss you can make when the currency pair moves. You could buy a million aud/jpy at 92.00.. but when it crashes to 82.00.. you've lost a 1000 pips or $100,000 ('lost' if you sell that trade) You can keep holding on to it, till it comes back up eventually.. but what if it doesn't?

Right now it seems like AUd/JPY can still go higher because japan doesn't seem too keen on raising their rates, so the carry trade is on full swing. All it takes is a little panic to bring the whole thing down!

~Shard~

Dec 16, 2006, 12:25 AM

Thanks for the clarification Music_Producer. I'm also currently in the carry trade, so we'll see how it goes. :cool:

Oh, and sorry nhallmark, I shouldn't throw terms out there without explaining them. :o I re-read my post to you and wanted to explain about beta.

Beta is simply a measure of a stock's (or in this case a currency pair's) volatility and subsequently its systematic risk. In the stock market it is compared to the volatility of the market as a whole. So, for currency pairs perhaps it's not the best term to use, although definitely applicable in the above example, as the GBP/USD is generally more volatile than the EUR/USD.

More specifically, a stock's beta is calculated by running a regression analysis resulting in a beta coefficient. If the beta coefficient is 1, then the stock tends to be as volatile as the stock market, or more specifically, the index/market/sector in which the stock resides. A beta greater than 1 means the stock is more volatile, while a beta less than 1 means it's less volatile.

Oh, and it is possible for a stock to have a negative beta. In this case, the stock tends to move in opposite directions than the market. One example is Anheuser Busch, which is though to benefit when the market is doing poorly because more people turn to drinking. ;) :D (And no, I'm not joking...)

So, some examples to summarize:

- a beta of 1 represents a stock price movement that has the same volatility as the underlying index, sector, etc.
- a beta of 0.50 represents a stock price movement that is half as volatile as the underlying index, sector, etc.
- a beta of 2.50 represents a stock price movement that is 150% more volatile than the underlying index, sector, etc.

Make sense? :cool:

nhallmark

Dec 16, 2006, 12:58 AM

That makes sense. Thanks Shard. I was about to post and ask you about that.

I was quite tempted to get in, but didn't. Never know what can happen with these moves.

Are you talking about the CPI data or TIC report. I thought you traded CPI?

nhallmark.. haha.. 1/3 of a pip

Err...I dont have have a comeback :cool: Oh yeah, "I'm learning"-That's my excuse!:p

Seriously, I shouldnt have traded the TIC but I didn't know that until afterwards,

Now I know not to trade in a situation like this morning.

One example is Anheuser Busch, which is though to benefit when the market is doing poorly because more people turn to drinking. (And no, I'm not joking...)

That's hilarious...but it makes perfect sense.

I deifnitely need to get on tradethenews - that Oanda news service is too slow.

Yeah, I used the oanda service for about three days and I was done. They seem to report the news almost as an afterthought. Tradethenews has a siren that goes off and the headline shows up red. It really gets your attention. The audio news is pretty cool which I used when I had the trial but now that Im paying Im doing just text because text is $39 and audio is something like $179.

But, if I had been trading real money today, I would have made $40 on the CPI data this morning, so tradethenews pays for itself - its worth it in my opinion.