Rare glimpse into politics, here on FX Madness. Maybe even not politics but news regarding a politician. Former Sen. Ted Stevens, a Republican from Alaska, was convicted on corruption charges in October. In an unusual turn of events, federal judge dismissed this conviction. On top of that, he took the rare and serious step of opening a criminal investigation into prosecutors who mishandled the case.  Judge Emmet Sullivan said he has never seen anything approaching the mishandling and misconduct as was present in this case.  Special prosecutor to investigate Justice Department lawyers who repeatedly mishandled witnesses and withheld evidence from defense attorneys, was appointed. The prosecutors involved could face prison time and fines. Makes you think about how other cases in the system are handled and how often something like this happens. I have a passing interest in this case, because I met the then Senator Stevens couple of times in social occasions. I lived in Anchorage for a few years and some of the people I associated with were active in political circles. One of the very few brushes with big time politics in my life. Thankfully.
On a more familiar turf, Bank of Japan left interest rates unchanged, largely as expected. BoJ already buys commercial paper, corporate bonds and stocks from financial institutions to help shore up their balance sheets, but announced new initiative to expand the type of debt instrument it that will be accepted from now on. This will allow BoJ to pump even more money into the system. Quantitative easing at work. Once they exhaust this avenue, what is next? Cars and used furniture?
There were also news from Australia, where rates were cut to 3% and senate passed 42 bn stimulus package.  Markets must have liked it because AUD went on a run. This put a wrinkle in my plans from yesterday to sell AUD-CHF. It simply didn’t happen, price went the other way, but, for now, the order stays open.  Also, it created some changes in a prior GBP-AUD buy intention.
Plan was to buy it at 2.0600. Price finally dropped there and order was filled. This pair had hard time getting through 100 SMA. I’ll give it one more go, and if it doesn’t go above, I’ll close at the market. It seems to be above it right now.  Buy order at 2.1025 is still valid.
Some other trades worked better. EUR-CAD sell from last week  came to conclusion.

Not much to analyze, really. Breakout worked, if a little late, for a nice 175 pips gain. Good trade, more of them are always welcome.
I will try another trade in Canadian Dollar pair, NZD-CAD to be exact.

Looking for a break under 0.7118, targeting about 100 pips. Yen crosses don’t look very good as buys just yet, so I’ll leave them alone.
I will not be posting anything on Thursday, too busy, but I should be able to update tomorrow.

Mike K.