Weekly Trading Update - 03-07 May 2010

I thought this week was going to be another volatile week and I wasn't disappointed. Indeed it was because of this that I traded smaller stakes then usual this week. After all there's no point doing technical analysis if there is a chance that a news item concerning one of the troubled European countries could come out at any time and have a massive impact on the markets.

I opened two positions in total and they were both short positions on the hapless Euro. The first was on the EUR/USD pair first thing Monday morning. I wasn't planning on trading during the bank holiday, but I noticed that the EMAs had crossed downwards overnight and the price had pulled back slightly so I was presented with a perfect entry point that I simply couldn't resist.

I went short at 1.3240 and kept an eye on it throughout the day. I managed to close half the position for 50 points on Monday afternoon and let the other half run, moving my stop loss to break-even. I was initially targeting 1.31 but because of all the negative news about Greece (as well as Portugal and Spain), I thought it was worth holding on for 1.30, and thankfully this target was hit on Tuesday evening. Of course it's fallen by several hundred points since then but I was more happy with that profit.
The other trade I opened was on the EUR/GBP pair on Tuesday morning. I noticed that the EMAs had already crossed downwards on the 4 hour chart and the price had consolidated slightly, before suddenly turning downwards after all the negative news coming out of Europe. I figured that this was a good time to ride this negative momentum and went short at 0.8640. I then closed half for 40 points, as I normally do on this pair, and let the other half run once more. As it turned out I closed this position for another 40 points, which was again far too soon, but it was another decent profit.
So overall it was a fairly profitable week this week despite the fact that I was trading with smaller stakes.
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