AbeSmith

Hello. Today EURUSD came down. I bought some at 1.46732 (represented by arrow in chart) and place the stop at 1.45560 (blue horizontal line). Might add some more if it gets close to support around 1.45800. Basically we had a breakout of that pivot and now it is coming down and might be retesting it. There seems to be a guantlet of support here, visible both on the daily and 60 minutes. Technically I'm comfortable with the play. Fundamentally I haven't seen anything to make me want to change my stance.

Hello. Yesterday on Bloomberg TV or CNBC a guest was talking about China being more immune to the global economic slowdown. Here is an article about China stock market rising due to new economic data that came out Thursay: http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/fn/5482567.html There is a chance that a fed rate cut will stimulate the global economy, if only in the short term. If that is the case then I think China would yield the higher return. The FXI is an ETF that follows the Chinese market closely. You can see a blue line around 147 designating the resistance that was broken and now price has come back down towards the resistance and closed at that area. A good swing trade might be to buy it here. You can place your stop just below the main low around 134, or might want to do a tighter stop and just test price action on the retest of this s/r level at 147. I'm already long FXI from 150, with a stop just below the low at 134. But I might move the stop a bit higher. Not sure. Anyways, I'm not sure about this setup. If you are new to the site you should know that I'm new to trading so be careful. Would welcome any comments about this setup. Do you think market will stay above the main low that was formed at 1/22 ahead of the Fed meeting? That is my guess. Do you think Fed will cut rates significantly and cause a rallie? I'm not sure. Do you think this trade is too risky?

Thanks PivotProfiler. Good info.

Thanks Torero. Good to know.

Well Brownsfan, I'm by no means cherry picking nice looking charts. I'm new to Forex and this is my observation of EURUSD. So I don't know the answer to all these questions, but they are valid questions which I will be finding out about.

Thanks Hlm. Good points.

Hello again. Here is an article related to EURUSD. It says that fears of a European rate cut have reduced following some comments by their Fed. So market seems to be bullish on EURUSD. Also, the US Fed meeting is coming up before the Euro fed meeting. The US is Fed rate announcement is scheduled for Jan 30, while the ECB announcement is scheduled for Feb. 7th. I got stopped out on my swing trade, but might be looking to find and entry again for the swing trade. Then if price continues to rise I might sell some ahead of the EUR fed meeting. FOREX-Euro bounces back as rate cut hopes ease By Ian Chua LONDON, Jan 24 (Reuters) - The euro strengthened against the dollar and yen on Thursday after tough talk on inflation from European Central Bank policymaker Axel Weber dampened expectations of a possible near-term interest rate cut. The yen retreated on the back of the bounce in the euro and as European stocks extended their rally, after earlier gaining on lingering concerns over the health of the global economy. "For the time being, the ECB are maintaining a very hawkish line so no signs of any rate cut any time soon," said Chris Turner, head of FX strategy at ING. "You're then left with sharply lower U.S. rates, stable European rates and with equities doing quite well at the moment ... the market is just going to focus on the dollar bearish story." Weber said the U.S. Federal Reserve's surprise decision to cut interest rates by 75 basis points this week hasn't shifted the ECB focus on euro zone inflation, dampening mounting expectations that it too will have to cut rates soon. The euro climbed 0.3 percent to $1.4683 by 1206 GMT and was also up 0.3 percent versus the Japanese currency at 156.60 yen , well above an early low of 154.86 yen. The dollar was steady against the Japanese currency at 106.65 yen , off early lows. Higher-yielding currencies such as the New Zealand also benefited, gaining 0.6 percent to $0.7715 . The euro had come under selling pressure in recent weeks as signs emerge that weakness in the U.S. economy is having a knock-on effect on the euro zone, fuelling the argument for a rate cut by the European Central Bank. Some of those concerns also eased slightly after German corporate sentiment unexpectedly rose in January, bolstering policymakers' assertion that the euro zone economy can withstand turmoil in financial markets. [iD:nL24345341]. CHANGING LANDSCAPE The turnaround in the euro helped reverse earlier demand for the low-yielding yen when investors remained worried about the U.S. economy despite Wall Street's positive performance overnight. Optimism about a U.S. government plan to rescue ailing bond insurers, which could prevent investors from being forced to sell billions of dollars of bonds the insurers had covered, sparked a comeback in stocks, but was greeted initially with scepticism in the currency markets. The FTSEurofirst 300 <.FTEU3> index of top European shares jumped 5 percent. (Editing by Ron Askew) ((ian.chua@reuters.com; +44 207 542 1028; Reuters Messaging: ian.chua.reuters.com@reuters.net))

Brownsfan, here is the 5 minute chart of EURUSD and YM today, in that order: As you can see, EURUSD was orderly today. Followed support and resistence very well, and lacks in the eratic movement one sees in the YM. Now look at YM. Like something out of the wild west. I'm not saying one is better than the other for you. You seem to be comfortable with eminies. Anyways, here is the charts you were curious about.

Thanks monad. I will surely look into it.

Ok. Thanks Torero. I will look into those.

Ok. Thanks Mister Ed.

Thanks Mister Ed. How would you rate IB as a FX brokers, and also do you know if they do any of the evil things mentioned above? Are there any other reputable FX brokers that you might recommend? Thank.

Abe, Allow me to play devil's advocate: 1) The e-mini's are virtually 24 hours as well. Broswnfan, With eminis, if you want to get out of a swing position afterhours, aren't there some restrictions? Like limit order only, wide spreads, less liquidity? Not sure about the restrictions but I know it is more difficult to trade. 2) That volume number is an interesting one. I wonder how much volume a small trader needs in order to be successful? Doesn't more volume tend to cause less eratic movements? I heard that YM is more eratic than S&P because there is less volume on YM. So I assume with the high volume on Forex it is not as eratic. Watching YM and Forex closely on an intraday basis the past few days I have noticed that YM was alot more eratic. 3) We could find charts showing less/more volatility at certain times. Personally, I thrive on volatility so that works for me but I can see what you are saying here. 4) Same with the e-mini's. YOU control the leverage being employed. With emini's though the control is not as much, both in terms of amount of leverage I think and fluidness or exactness of how much you want to risk. In YM, each contract is a big chunk, with one tick moving as much as $5 in the YM. But with Forex you can more closely control how much you want to risk. For me 1 YM contract is often too much. So I'm often finding myself getting stopped out in the YM volitility, partly because I don't want to risk the money for a wider stop. 5) You may not hear about servers going down b/c there is no centralized place to trade forex! You are trading against the broker! It's all on the broker's servers! 6) I would agree here but I've also read how certain types of 'bucket shops' will go stop hunting and since there is no centralized price center, there's not much you can do if Company A shows price there even though Company B does not... And as you said, there is next to zero regulation here. That alone is enough for me to stay away. When there is no regulation, that only helps the BIG boys. Lack of regulation only hurts the small, retail trader. I would like to see more regulation to keep them honest. But Brownsfan, don't be so quick to shun Forex. There must be some good Forex brokers out there that are not bucket shops. IB I hear is ok in that sense. A talented trader like you might do well in Forex. I'll be interested to see how your forex trading goes Abe but I would guess if you go through a 'stop hunting' time period or the spread being outrageous during econ news, you may reconsider. And make sure you do your homework on what broker to go through! I need to do more research about Forex. Good luck Abe. Thanks.

Thanks Paul. I just would like to add a list of pros and cons of Forex and YM. Ofcourse the Pros and Cons may not apply to everyone, but for me it seems that: 1. Forex is 24hrs, live. That means that there is no premarket and postmarket restrictions. 2. Forex has more volume. 3. Less volatile. 4. And is very flexible as far as how much money you want to risk. Can be highly leveraged, or low leverage. 5. I'm not sure how reliable the Forex trading is, but I have not heard about Forex servers going down. 6. I have not heard about Forex trading being closed because it was going down too much in value. Now, I would be interested to know the disadvatages of Forex. One disadvantage I know of is that it is not very regulated. But if regulated means closing down trading because it is going too far in one direction then that may not be good however.

Hello. I would like to say that I'm a "traitor." I have been betting against the US Dollar and have been doing ok. I'm also considering "betraying" the YM and moving to Forex. Forex is open 24 hrs, and it is more flexible to control how much you want to risk. But with YM, for a small time beginner trader like me, it is too expensive, even with 1 contract, and very volatile. And now there is a $55 a month charge for the YM data at TS. So I find it fitting to change my avatar to Benedict Arnold. He is recognized as a traitor, and phonetically that is like trader.

Thanks Torero. I'm watching this one closely. It was very exciting.

Here are the pics:

OMG. My first Forex trade!!! I woke up today without the alarm. Said to myself today I will not set the alarm. I will wake up whenever I feel like it. I woke up aroud 8CT, and by the time I did my morning routine 10 minutes before the open I found out that the fed had cut rates 3/4 point, Emergency cut. So I said to myself, wow. I looked at the forex and my first thought was, when did the cut happen. Looking at the spike on the chart I assumed it was around 7:25CT. Then I noticed the classic 1-2-3 pattern often when there is a fed cut. 1 is the initial spike. 2 is a retracement. And 3 is the second rally. I noticed we were in the 2 range, and price was consolidating. Then I decided to calculate how much to risk and where to place my stop. Since I was looking at the daily chart I had a swing trade in mind. So decided that with the stop at 1.43 I could risk a little over 1K if I buy 50,000 euros. So then I entered into my IB TWS account and first I noticed that there were 2 choices, Ideal and Ideal pro. So I did some reserach online and found that Ideal pro was the one to go with. Then I placed the order for 50,000 Euros at 8:40CT, hit transmit, and BAM, the DING sounded and almost instantly my TWS spreadsheet showed a -505 loss in realized P/L, with the trade closed!!!!! The portfolio section also showed no signs of a trade. But the trades section only showed the buy! And the account section was showing the trade active with the P/L changing. OMG. So I called IB, was placed on hold. Normally I would panick and get upset, but from prior experience I knew that the most important thing was to remain calm. I theorized that perhaps I was overleveraged and IB closed out the trade. But that didn't make much sense because I had 10K in my account. But suffice it to say that I do not like to read instruction manuals and so do not know what the leverage is. This got me in trouble once with a GOOG swing trade. So I was on hold for several minutes and right when the IB representative answered the phone, I mean right at that exact moment, the TWS spreadsheet erased the -505 loss closed out trade and showed an active EURUSD trade. So now the trade is active. My stop is at 1.43. But I'm considering what to do with it. Tighten the stop to break even perhaps. Take some profit at 1.48. Fed might continue to cut rates in the next meeting. Anyways, the lesson I learned is, don't panick. Don't loose your temper. It will make the situation worse. This time I didn't panick or lose my temper.

Hello again. EurUsd dropped significantly today. It's starting to look better now. Stochastics are closer to oversold. Price might be headed to the support at 1.43.

Ok guys and gals. The EURUSD is starting to look interesting on the long side. Stochastic is heading towards oversold. Smaller red candle on the 17th pointing to slowing down in direction. Also, reverse head and shoulders pattern. And fed rate cut helps to make it go up, right. Perhaps we'll get a surprise rate cut, like 1 basis point. That would make it go up? Anyways, still to early to enter at this point. But just wanted to point it out and see if anyone had any input. Probably best to wait for it to bottom and after it shows signs of reversal, perhaps 2 days of green then go long.

Ah yes, the good old 666.

TS has excellent charting, and for 10 roundtrips per month you get it for free. But the YM data is $55, and the order execution is slow. I spoke to a TS representative some weeks ago and he said very soon they will have a demo version of TS. That was my biggest complaint about TS, is that they provided no demo. I lost some money on account of that. But if that is fixed then the next biggest complain is poor execution. Infinity is the way to go with that, and also IB. Though customer service at IB is the worse I have encountered.

The Bear. http://movies.yahoo.com/movie/1802837661/info Very nice and touching movie. Saw it last night.

Yeah. It sucked big time. Maybe next time I can find a good stock to trade, and actually trade it.

No. Missed this one. Thanks.