Trip to Europe
By Laetitia Vaval | October 10, 2007
I’ve just come back from a two-week trip to Europe. Needless to say that I sure felt the weakness of the dollar. I usually love to shop when I am in Paris but this time around everything was so expensive that it took away much of the fun.
I also visited London for the first time, and despite having heard many times that London was one of the most expensive cities in the world, I still couldn’t believe how high the cost of living was. It seemed as if everything cost exactly TWICE as much over there than it does in New York. For example, a 1-week subway pass is about 22 pounds over there (which is about US $45 !! — twice as much as what it costs here). A simple subway ride is 4 pounds — US $ 8 !!! Food, clothing, transportation seemed to keep the same numerical value as in the U.S. ( 32 for a basic T-Shirt, 12 for a pizza, etc) except that instead of being expressing in dollars prices were in Pounds (i.e. more than doubled).
Even duty-free over there wasn’t all that worth it given the exchange rate…
It was really interesting going there at this time, right after my stay at FXCM. I never had really paid much attention to exchange rates in the past, but my trip was a first-hand demonstration of the current situation with the US Dollar.
Tags: currency market, dollar, fxcm, laetitia vaval, wall street warrior, wall street warriors
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Range Trading CHFJPY
By Laetitia Vaval | September 19, 2007
I just opened a position in the CHFJPY as I am looking to range trade this afternoon. The CHFJPY has been trading in a range between since yesterday afternoon between 97.92 and 98.30. I entered the trade (got long) at 98.01 about 8 pips away from the bottom range( I realize this might not be an ideal entry point given that the range is relatively narrow), placed a stop at 97.78 (2pips below the bottom of the range — including the candle wicks), and a limit at 98.26 (the top of the trading range). I am going to use this trade to really respect the stops I placed initially.
I’ve seen that one of my biggest problems is that as soon as a pair starts trading against me, I just close the position without even waiting for it to hit my stop and that has made me loose a lot of “fake” money since after I closed out my position, the pair would trade back in my favor. I also placed a limit at 98.250 as I will be stepping out to lunch soon and therefore won’t be in front of the computer for a little while. But my main goal for this trade is to leave it untouched until it hits either my Stop or my Limit prices. And to learn to control my emotions, because as I write the CHFJPY is trading against me and I’m tempted to just close out my position ! But I’m going to let it trade “by itself”. Will update in a little bit.
Tags: forex, forextrading, jpy, laetitia vaval, range trading, wall street warriors
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