Tuesday, December 29, 2009

Soul kitchen (2009)

Food. Music. Sex. Work. Family. The important things in life, all in one delirious, mad, funny film. Turkish director Fatih Akin tells a story about the Greek-Germans of Hamburg. Terrific actors, astonishing soundtrack. This is precisely the kind of little films we can still view in Europe. In 10-20 years all theaters will be showing american popcorn like Avatar...
Link

Time to think, to rest

No trades till Monday. Volatility is low right now, as the big guys are on the mountains. Time to review the ending year.

Saturday, December 26, 2009

Choosing a pair

A friend commented in a previous post : "Most of the time you trade EJ sometimes you trade EU. Do you watch both pair at the same time? When you trade EU how is that experience different from trading EJ? Isn't it that EU is very slow, unpredictable and spikes too much?"

I always have open charts of both pairs and examine the setups on both. I usually choose the pair with the bigger volatility. I have an ADX indicator (1 min) on a Market Analyzer in Ninja Trader which calculates the volatility of the two pairs for me. I choose the pair with the bigger ADX reading, if I can "feel" the corresponding setup. I also avoid trading when the pair has ADX<20. I "discovered" that, most of the times, when one of these two pairs ranges, the other one trends , and vice versa. This is due to the triangular correlation and fixing between euro, usd and yen.

When euro/yen stutters, euro/usd is FASTER, in most situations. No pair is unpredictable in the (very) short term, no one is predictable in the long term. Hope this helps.

Friday, December 25, 2009


Merry Christmas to you all!

Wednesday, December 23, 2009

Eurusd today

Smooth movement on eurusd this afternoon. One trade closed prematurely and a scared exit on the next one.

Tuesday, December 22, 2009

Lazy afternoon

Lazy trades, waiting for Christmas vacation. As a result, entries and handling become approximative and risk increases.

Friday, December 18, 2009

Going down

Ending the week in peace and smoothness.

Thursday, December 17, 2009

Morning thrills

Terrific Frankfurt opening, with sharp movement. One fault on the chart, an unnecessary contra trade, not closed at once. Respect the trend!..

Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Post FOMC boredom

Spent the evening with this non-sense, waiting for the range to break. At the end I was very bored and entered inside the range and had a loser, of course.

Tuesday, December 15, 2009

Steady pace

Price got a steady pace going up and gave decent pips. The last trade, a contra-trend one, was entered at the break of local minor support.

Greece smashed the euro!..

(upd) Our brilliant (just kidding) Prime Minister spoke finaly yesterday and said nothing concrete about the greek debt and his recovery plan. As a result, today, shortly after the european markets opening, traders shorted firmly the euro against dollar. 80 easy pips in one hour time. The fundamentals guys made easy and predictable gains. I wasn't there to trade this, my mistake. In the last few days, little Greece smashed the euro by 4%, almost 600 pips..

Monday, December 14, 2009

Boring day (till now)

Trying to grab some in a completely flat session.. Euro and the crosses wait for the rescue measures for Greece' economy, to be announced at 20:00 my time (18:00 London), by our supreme Prime Minister. Humanity in the hands of Mr. Bean...

Saturday, December 12, 2009

Whatever works

Splendid return of Woody Allen to his beloved New York, after several films in Europe. A clever and nice movie. It made my day. Superb dialogue as always, full of ideas and perfect actors. Happy Hannukah!..

Thursday, December 10, 2009

Perfect day

Today I had what I call a perfect day : fast gains with four trades only. And then getting out of this. After some days of overtrading and addiction feelings again.

Wednesday, December 9, 2009

Reversal

I took a risky contra trade at the fibo 50% retracement (15M chart). Nobody can ignore Fibonacci!..

Tuesday, December 8, 2009

Forcing things

Insisting on a contra trend, with very tight stop, is not very wise.. The two reversal trades were just premature, the reversal came later and in a natural way.

Monday, December 7, 2009

Getting a direction

First trade was lucky, then it took some time to get a price direction on the chart. This is precisely the moment I look for. But the trades inside the unbroken rectangle can be painful.

Monday morning

Friday, December 4, 2009

And this

VERY tight stops on trades placed at round numbers (1.4900). Done for the day.

Eurusd

Allways monitoring 2 pairs and choosing the one with the bigger volatility. Today and post-NFP, it was the euro/dollar.

Wednesday, December 2, 2009

Afternoon trades

The previous long bias kept me out of the first two nice drops.

Poor execution

I was in very bad shape today. Risked a LOT on the first, then I closed trade precisely when previous high was taken.. Smart guy!...

Monday, November 30, 2009

Bits of bread (again)

Playing safe again with bigger lots. But first trade was of late entry, therefore risky.

Multi-entries effect

xiting a trade and re-entering on the same price movement increases risk and makes trades shorter and less profitable. On this chart i had to exit many times, under minimal signs of reversal. As a consequence, a drop of 40 pips gave me minimal gains, because my first priority is to avoid a loss. Last trade was more natural.

Saturday, November 28, 2009

Melody Gardot

The new hot name in jazz/blues singing. She is perfect, she is sublime. Just 24 years old and she sings like the big ladies of jazz. She started writing music and singing to aid her recovery from a serious car accident. Her interesting story is here and a sample here. All the songs on the cd are little gems. But it would take a heart of stone to remain unmoved by the poignant title track "My One And Only Thrill". One of the best albums for 2009.

Friday, November 27, 2009

A sunny day is over

Missed the nice first movement on this but I took the second. There are allways moves to catch.

A nice day is over, with no tricks on Friday afternoon. 78 pips won with fewer trades than yesterday.

New York

Tried the NY stock market opening (16:30 my time) and the repercussions on euro/yen. Going with the flow.

And this

London

Tried the London opening, to check the increased (since yesterday) volatility.

While I was sleeping..

Should I trade in the night?.. Pre-Tokyo was awesome, the poor euro was crashed..

Thursday, November 26, 2009

And this

Stopped for the day after this, with a 48 pips total gain. Payed back 12p in commissions (too many trades).

Thanksgiving...

Turmoil on a Thanksgiving day...I planned to stay away from trading today because of the holiday, but the pair started to move vividly after the beginning of sharp decline on European markets. On situations like this ,the drop is linear and very important but I insisted to trade my method, takind on slice of bread each time and re-entering with tight stops always.

Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Bits of bread

A series of little positive trades, besides the first risky (late) one and the shy last.

Tuesday, November 24, 2009

In a hurry

Some hurried trades today. Hope to find again time and my schedule from tomorrow on.

Thursday, November 19, 2009

A few trades

Some trades today, after several days of inactivity (family problems). More potential up but i must leave my post now.

Thursday, November 12, 2009

Connection lost

IB price feed was lost just after the close of the third trade. I allways use hard stops, at -4, -5 pips (with 1 or 2 exceptions per month, which inevitably become the mistake of the month, Murphy's law!). So I am not afraid of connection drops and freezes anymore. A friend who likes "mental stops", lost 3000 euros in one trade. He lost connection while open and then price went 100 pips against him...

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Shy trades

Several shy trades in a row, then a trusted local breakout. I call shy the trades with very conservative exits, when the effort to avoid to have a loss comes first. I experiment this recently, with highest lots. The bars are perfect to control such trades.

20 years

The night the Wall fell down -9/11/89- i was there, a young photographer covering the event for greek media. I will never forget some images, the East Berliners walking in the West with the eyes of children in a toy store. The happiness of freedom on the faces. The gazes of some in KaDeWe store, admiring the 1200 ham varieties. The chilled people in the night of the next day, after 12 hours walking in West Berlin with temperature around zero, with a Red Cross pot of soup in the hand..

I finished recently reading this excellent book by F.Taylor on Wall's history. You learn a lot about post-war Germany, the Cold War and the fall of communism, all in 500 pages. Fascinating.

Sunday, November 8, 2009

Le Pas Du Chat Noir

SUBLIME recording! From the great ECM label, the biggest oud player today, Tunisian Anouar Brahem, together with French pianist Francois Couturier and accordeonist Jean-Luis Matinier. Like oriental reminiscenes coming out from a smokey Parisian bal-musette, hand in hand with Erik Satie.. Unforgettable.. A sample here, just to make your Sunday!...

Friday, November 6, 2009

Post -NFP trades

Many trades after NFP, totalling 67 pips.

Thursday, November 5, 2009

Mistake of the month

The price on this topped with two red bars on same level, then started to drop. I was distracted and super-confident, so i didn't close, even when price gave a second chance to do this. The important loss was the natural consequence.

Wednesday, November 4, 2009

Post-FOMC

Riding the tide, with manually trailing (tight) stop.

London

A few pips on the London opening, going with the stream (up). New York session is more volatile than London recenlty, so i don't trade in the morning anymore. Today was an exception.

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

2 years Forexbird

The sparrow is 2 years old! This blog was started on October 31, 2007. The very first trade analysis i did is here. The purpose was to keep a record while scalping the euro pairs, inspired from M. Weinstein's conception (see the motto on the left). Two years and 570 posts later, a lot of things have changed, my style and tools, my attitude towards the market. Back in 2007, although I had allready 2 and half years of forex trading experience on my back, I was still hooked on indicators, "systems" and methodologies found on technical books and the internet. It took me another two years to emancipate myself from all this stuff and to evolve towards simplicity : all I need now is to feel the price movement. Nothing more, nothing less. No indicators, no systems, no trading teachers or gurus. I still have indicators on my charts but I don't pay much attention to them anymore. Trading, scalping especially, is pure geometry. You need time to get your master degree on trading geometry. You only have to study the price movement on (thousands of) charts, for some (long or shorter) time.

Monday, November 2, 2009

Purity

It is written somewhere (in Bhagavat-Gita I suppose), that only flowers and children are pure on earth. A humble price movement can also be pure and beautiful, like the one of my last trade. So evident and simple, like an euclidean theorem, or a perfect circle. 75 pips for today.

Good news

Smooth moves and trades after good news from U.S. economy (pending home sales).

Thursday, October 29, 2009

Opposite way

Same mistake as on the previous post : not trusting the trend, closing the trades and missing most of the pips.

Wednesday, October 28, 2009

A clear trend

Missed the first move down on this, then i managed to follow the price and get some pips. Two problems here : First, I don't trust the trend much, so I close early and re-enter, missing a substancial part of the move. Second, I try to anticipate the reversal point and that is very risky on a strong trend like this one of today.

Tuesday, October 27, 2009

I am back

Back to my base and trading. Starting with these 3 trades, the third one should be closed earlier.

Friday, October 16, 2009

On the road

No trades for the next 10 days. Travelling around Europe whithout pc (I hope).

Thursday, October 15, 2009

Post-CPI

Trades after CPI announcement for today.