Yeah, I'm not a fan either of threads where OP lays out a full page of posting "rules" that everyone else is supposed to obey.
I never asked anyone to "obey" any rules, I gave information about my general approach. Feel free to participate, otherwise you have the free choice to roam in hundreds of other threads. Sound fair?
I am still long for one reason: Short interest in eur is still sky high plus most importantly despite yields blowing out in Spanish and Italian sovereign paper eur held amazingly steady. I would not have risked 20-30 pips on 2-3 trades against the short term trend if I only wanted to shoot for a 50 pip gain. My position is currently up 80 pips (traded twice the position size as indicated in real-time) and reset my stop loss to entry, making this a risk-free trade. Could I end up with nothing in my hand on this trade? Most certainly, but I believe the probabilities of trading beyond 1.2530 are currently higher than retreating below 1.2450 (current market @1.2490). I mentioned yesterday that a pullback down to 1.2420 could well be in the cards and thats still the case but I am a bit more confident in my upward bias simply because the eur did not blow out despite the yield explosions in European sovereigns. Nothing else to do than sitting on my hands on this trade.
+352 pips total after 6 trades. Not too bad for a week's worth of work, and that is just on the discretionary side. Sometimes one has to stare into the abyss and just get involved, especially given I had well defined stops in a highly liquid market, though it took me 3 attempts to get there. I would not have tried that often if I did not have as much conviction as I had. Now, there is a good chance I may miss a little on more follow-through but I wanna err a little on the lighter side going into the end of the week with Greek elections looming, any poll result, any comments out of Spain or Italy can turn the market around with a blink of the eye. Any sort of meaningful short squeeze has not materialized and I have to respect that. My take is that we need a stronger catalyst for those being short to throw in the towels. I am very bearish on Europe to the extent that I do not have any solution in mind should I be one of the political decision makers. Its funny but Merkel enjoys a much better reputation and more respect among the general European public than by intellectuals and non-European political leaders in regards to her austerity policy measures, at least according to polls. What would any of you readers think you could do better than her? Sell out the public, the taxpayer, as has been done in the U.S.? In the end she is part of the electorate in Germany and thus held accountable for finding a balanced solution that does not isolate Germany but stays truthful to those who worked hard and paid their taxes and voted for her. I think it was the dutch PM (or was it a dutch central banker) recently said "its hard to imagine a solution to the issue of fiscal union while we increased our retirement age to 67 and France just lowered it back to 60" (I paraphrase). I do not even understand why every intellectual is so freaked out about the prospects of a recession, double dips. What is news about the necessity to correct after years of abuse and exuberance? Is that not how nature and life in general works? Does anyone seriously think such laws can be circumvented? Fact is that Spain, France, Italy, yes, indeed most European countries need to pay the price for the party they so much enjoyed while a few others worked hard on becoming more efficient and to further diversify businesses worldwide. Germans would also like to evade taxes, have 3 times their current amount of annual holidays, retire in the age of 60, receive agricultural subsidies, wind and solar power subsidies, and sweet transfer payments from the South in addition to 5-10% upfront down mortgages to each and everyone. In summary, I think it is very hard to impossible to solve this crisis, too many adverse objectives. Is Germany already too deep in this to get out without paying more than bailing everyone else out and trying to shape a fiscal and political union? I am not sure to be honest.