July 24, 2009

Weekly Trading Update - 20-24 July 2009

After the disappointment of last week, it's been a much more profitable week this week. My 4 hour trading system generated three decent set-ups (on the GBP/USD, GBP/JPY and USD/JPY pairs) and thankfully all of them worked out nicely.

The first two trades occurred on the GBP/JPY and USD/JPY pairs at roughly the same time on Tuesday evening. The daily Supertrend was (and still is) red so I was only looking for opportunities to go short and the EMAs did indeed cross downwards on the 4 hour chart for both of these pairs.

I went short on the GBP/JPY at 154.10 and opened a short position at 93.73 on the USD/JPY pair. Unfortunately they didn't move very much straight away so I had to let them run overnight. I set my profit targets at 100 and 40 points respectively. The 100 point target was triggered overnight on the GBP/JPY pair but the USD/JPY trade was still running when I woke up the next morning. However it did move nicely downwards and I managed to close half the position for 40 points and let the other half run, moving my stop loss down to break-even, however this stop loss was later taken out.

The other trade this week was on the GBP/USD pair. This pair is still in an upwards trend according to the Supertrend indicator on the daily chart so I was looking for upwards EMA crossovers on the 4 hour chart. I missed the first one unfortunately, because it happened between Sunday evening and Monday morning, but I did manage to catch the second crossover. This one occurred on Wednesday and I managed to go long at 1.6437.

MARKET SNAPSHOT: Stocks Extend 12-year Lows As Strategists Debate Significance

By Kate Gibson

As U.S. stocks tried and failed Tuesday to bounce back from the prior session's stumble to 12-year lows, analysts, technicians and would-be historians debated the significance of the declines, which may or may not signal an important market milestone.

On Tuesday, utility shares led losses, as the S&P 500 Index slid to its first close under 700 since Oct. 28, 1996, with a passel of testimony from federal officials doing nothing to calm jitters about the recession and the ailing financial system.

"Certainly when that November low of 750 was breached, getting to 700 happened relatively quickly. It's the economy and the extent [to which] corporate earnings have deteriorated," said Dean Curnutt, president of Macro Risk Advisors. "Folks are walking down the street and seeing a lot of empty storefronts."

After trading in a 150-point range on either side of zero during the day, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 37.27 points, or 0.6%, to 6,726.02. The S&P 500 declined 4.49 points, or 0.6%, to 696.33, and the Nasdaq Composite (RIXF) declined 1.84 points, or 0.1%, to 1,321.01.

On Monday, the Dow had closed at 6,763, a level not seen since 1997. If nothing else, the breach of 12-year lows is unusual. Other than Monday's retesting of 1997 lows, such a crossing has occurred only twice before, on Dec. 6, 1974, and April 8, 1932.