This happens to me often. After all these years of watching the markets, thousands of trades and being relatively successful, I get surprised by markets behavior. This, time however, it was in general terms, not causing any additional losses. I’m talking about the reaction today to all the news coming out of US. It was mentioned on these pages before, but I repeat every so often, I don’t trade economic news releases. By this I mean not trying to predict if particular announcement will meet the estimate, and positioning myself (trades) in line with my guesswork. That said, I’m trying to be aware at what time news are made public, so as not to place unnecessary orders around those times.
Looking at the economic calendar yesterday, with the sheer number of big news being scheduled, I truly expected some decisive moves in USD pairs. News didn’t disappoint, they turned out to be important. Unemployment shot up to 14 year high, at 6,5%, while economy shed some 240,000 jobs. All this failed to cause any substantial movement in USD, especially comparing to yesterday. While it didn’t cost me any money, I was surprised.
My focus was elsewhere, like the GBP-CHF trade I mentioned yesterday.

I managed to pocket 72 pips in short time, so I’m very pleased. Somebody asked me yesterday about short term GBP-JPY trades, so here is what happened today.

Three trades, 2 winners and one looser. Little smaller targets, as dictated by preceding swings. I think that daily ranges of GBP-JPY, will keep slowly contracting and my targets for this trades will gradually get smaller. But not just yet.
Another trade which was posted in this blog , long AUD-NZD, is still trapped in range.

This trade was taken with this possibility in mind and rather longer time frame for completion. I’m sitting on it for now.
Over the weekend I will take a look at longer term EUR-USD, see what the charts are revealing, if anything. Right now, however, it is time to relax and take it easy.

Mike K.