Will it really come to this? In spite of vehement government denial, some sources claim that within the next few weeks, if not days, the US government will have to step in and nationalise one or more banks.  Some of the banks mentioned are Citigroup, Bank of America and a wide assortment of regional and community banks. After all the bailouts and loan guarantees financial institutions are still in a lamentable shape. I’m sure that the dreaded word “nationalization” will be hidden behind some clever term like “taking temporary stake in company” or something of this sort. I don’t know if this will happen, but think this would be a scary development. Can you imagine Washington bureaucrats overseeing banks? Or any other, for profit enterprise for that matter? Very unpleasant thought. However it turns out , the “n” word or not, sounds like government will have to pump even more money into this mess.
Currencies started the week very lively. Pound made nice run and Yen fell just as nicely. But first, a look at EUR-CAD, a trade I wrote about yesterday.

Shortly after the open price came close to touching the order but didn’t. Eventually it was triggered and the target was 1.5900. On this platform it was missed by 2 pips. I was watching it and just closed it there at 1,5908 or 71 pips. Looks like price is creeping down and will most likely reach my intended target, but I don’t care.
Post “Pound-Franc, what now?” covered, what else, GBP-CHF. Possible trade was discussed there on 1H chart.

Had to take it on another platform, since by this time had a number of Pound trades going. Entry was at 1.6750 and target 1.6950. It worked very good. Lately this pair has been in a habit of just breaking out and than going through deep pull backs, which I think is challenging, and hope it changes.  Another buy order is placed at 1.7058. This time objective is much higher, 400 pips, but any pull back might be bigger, too. I’m using 4H chart for this, so the whole set  up might take a while to work itself out.
By request, chart of my GBP-JPY trades on 5M chart.

Only 2 trades. Not much to comment on other than the results are sub par relatively to how much the market moved.
Depending on what happens tomorrow, in the next post I will try to take a look at longer term GBP-JPY. This cross is approaching an important juncture, and some coverage might be in place. Today was a good start to a week, and I hope it stays like that.

Mike K.