Markets sprang to life today, following sleep inducing slumber of day before. Seems that all currency pairs decided to move, but not really until London session was well under way. My guess is Valentine’s Day must have been fruitful for traders- everybody took it easy on Monday, but dug in today with renewed vigor. We need more “holidays” like that, if it means easy profits.

All my trading today was focused on short term moves- I wanted to be out of everything before going on a trip. Pretty much the only trade mentioned on these pages before was a short position in AUD-JPY, established yesterday. For some time hourly chart looked it was slowly building rounded top, but in the end it was caused by lackluster market conditions in general, rather than genuine price action. Eventually this cross started to edge higher, creating minor tops and it was time to close it for a small loss.

I got out on a pullback after first spike up to just under the dominant high on this chart. Price crept up again and even made new high, by couple of pips, right before London session started. It was obvious that market want to go up and it was time to change my commitment, too. Decided to go long on next swing. Had to pass on the first move above 80.45, because of its unfortunate timing, right before London open. Luckily, it didn’t move far, so the following breakout didn’t really sacrifice any pips.

Long trade happened few hours later at 80.56. This was a little unusual transaction for me. In most instances I have an objective in mind for trades, but this time it was played by ear. Expectation was for directional moves today, as explained in last post. I simply let it run, with a bearish hourly candle putting an end to the trade. Move lasted for some time, no bearish candle emerged, and I closed it about an hour ago for 78 pips gain.

Very narrow ranges on Monday suggested strong possibility of directional moves today, especially given the level of confusion in the markets. I suggested using simple straddle trades on EUR-JPY and USD-CHF. One could debate if these are the best crosses for that, but they have worked well for me in the past and that’s what I used. Orders were placed a little outside of daily extremes with no targets. Things worked rather well, moves materialized and EUR-JPY made 133 pips.

Transaction in USD-CHF also produced decent results, 86 pips. Both of them were closed about an hour ago, probably near to what are going to be highs/lows for the day. I also managed to place a short term trade in GBP-CAD, pair that has been eluding me for a long time now. With time running short, I was looking at 15M chart. Set up wasn’t great, but after this prolonged sell off, any correction can be swift, and so was this one, bringing 61 pips.

This sums up a good day before a break. No new trades are posted, because I will not be monitoring markets. I’m leaving in few hours and coming back Sunday nigh, so no trading update until at least Monday. But there will be couple of new posts made here. My assistant will release them during my absence. Not sure on which days and at what time she’ll do it, but you can check out my Twitter account to stay current. Think you’ll like the topics covered. I wish everybody good trading results over next few days and see you next week!

Mike K.