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Last Week
By Laetitia Vaval | November 19, 2007
Last week, I entered a couple of profitable trades (but that could have been even more profitable had i not exited my positions too quickly).
On October 31st, I shorted the USDJPY. I had read one of Jamie’s technical analysis articles on DailyFx and he anticipated a strong downmove in the Yen. I entered at 115.403 and exited 9 days later at 110.61. At the time he wrote the article, Jamie advised aiming below 111.59. On the morning of November 9th, when I saw that the target price had been reached and even passed, I exited the trade, fearing that the pair would reverse and trade back up. Looking back at my exit strategy I realize that I exited the trade way too hastily, fearing to loose the money I had just made. There was no signal to buy back and in fact the pair traded down to about 108.50. I could have made some extra money by just holding on to my trade a little bit longer as I really didn’t have a “valid” reason to buy back.
The second profitable trade I entered was buying the USDCAD. Again, one of Jamie’s technical analysis articles suggested that the USD was about about to shoot up. The target price wasw .9750. I bought one lot at .9406 on November 9th and set a limit price of .9720 (right below the target price - once again by fear that the pair would suddenly reverse and that I would loose all my profits). My limit price was hit on November 12th, and I made a 344 pip profit. On November 11th, I decided to add another lot to my position and bought the USDCAD at .9466 ( I did not put a limit price on the 2nd lot) and sold it for .9627 in a pullback (3 hours after selling my first lot). The fact that I sold the lot in a pullback is really a weakness because a couple hours later USDCAD traded back up and within a couple days broke through .98 (as I write it is trading at .9850).
Basically, I saw a minor pull pullback and “freaked out”, sold my position and within a couple hours the pair was back to its original levels. In total, I made (161+344) a 505 pip profit on the USDCAD but once, again, had I held on longer to both of my trade I could have added at least another 200 pips.
I’m happy to have finally made some profitable trades, but now that I look back I can see which aspects of my trading I need to work on and improve.
For now, I haven’t identified what my next trade will be. It seems that most currency pairs have been trading in a tight range for the past few days.
noneTopics: Wall Street Warrior |