On Friday I closed my shorter term Pound trades. In case of GBP-JPY this ended a string of long trades. Almost immediately I received couple of emails telling me that my action is premature, and Yen is going get much weaker because of what is going on in North Korea. This implies that Japan is under a threat of nuclear attack, to be carried out at any moment. This also suggests that North Korea’s intentions are somehow predictable and somebody really knows what they are going to do. Well, as far as I can tell, NK’s officials have not a clue what will happen next. It all depends on the whims of ”Glorious leader”, which change every time he takes medications for his various illnesses, mental and others.  Since this happens few times a day, predicting what these people might or might not do is more difficult than reading charts.
Besides, all this posturing about nuclear capability is based on 2 tests of extremely small devices ( by world standards). There is no evidence they have technology to make them compact enough to tip rockets. Those, in turn, have ridiculously spotty performance record. From what they demonstrated so far, even if they managed to put such contraption together, there is a 50-50 chance of it blowing up during launch. It is doubtful they will do anything very stupid. However, since I have no capacity of foretelling what a doped up lunatic could do, will have to stick to charts.
Longer term GBP-CHF trade was not closed on Friday. This one I decided to stick with. It was taken based on daily chart, with an entry at 1.7504. Objective here is 1.8500.

As of this writing I’m perfectly willing to sit on this trade for a while, at least until my vacation, in about month time. In fact, this is one of the few transactions that I’m ready to average down if it goes against me. Additional buy order is placed at 1.7000. So, this is the GBP-CHF update, in trade and target is unchanged.
Back to Yen pairs. Short and intermediate term charts are not very clear to me. Some are bullish, most are indecisive, while CAD-JPY is all out bearish. Here is one that appears to be bullish.

NZD-JPY is very close to a breakout at 63.35. I’m not going to get in if this happens early on in the trading day. What I want to see is a pull back of some size, 60+ pips, and maybe buy on following breakout. If it happens. This means I could miss out on a move, so be it. About the only activity in Yen pairs I’ll be doing is buying 5M breakouts on GBP-JPY charts, with small targets. Large gaps on the open could provide additional opportunities.

Mike K.