Short Term Tactical Trade Call: Long EURO at 1.3450, Target 1.3550/1.3650, Stop 1.3420/1.34. Its a high risk situation given Spain's downgrade on Friday. Rationale: Developments over the weekend (Merkel-Sarkozy joint announcement) specifying end October to sort out europe's problems 'for crisis and for vision', and the subsequent strong price action during Asia open, has negated the damage from Spain's downgrade from the market at least short term. Regarding tight stop on this trade, my thinking is this was a big press conference in terms of strong message being given to market and short cover rally (especially covering shorts initiated after Spain's downgrade) should take Euro higher without any significant retrace. I might move stop to breakeven after euro crosses 1.3530 or so.
Will be interesting to see what kind of bounce europe gets from this stupid bank ballout. As I recall, the bailouts of Frannie were good for a one day bounce in the US in 2008. Since the half-life of the responses to these brain-dead gov't actions gets smaller and smaller, Europe may jump green for no more than a few hours.
For the first time in 5 years I sold some of my physical gold last week (5%) and doubled my position in my worst performing miner SLX. Should miners drop not 30% to 40% like they did untill today but 70% to 80% down I will probably exchange some more physical into miners. But for now let us pray it does not come to that shall we.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/oct/08/amanda-knox-facial-expressions?CMP=twt_gu Biggest lesson of Amanda Knox case: Never open your mouth to law enforcement
Apparently Know was stoned out of her mind during most of this period. A hint: don't spark one up before heading to police HQ for a chat with investigators. It takes very little to have your life destroyed.
Wow, I never thought this call will pan out so beautifully. I am pleased with myself, I hope if anyone took any idea from this call, he/she made some bucks. Euro just had no significant retracement today at all. If my memory serves me right, such days used to happen in Euro during Sep/Oct of 2010, when Euro gained almost 1200 pips in a month or so. I have a huge urge to book all the profits and close this trade, however I have decided to make this trade a bit longer in nature. I entered with x position at 1.345, added 1/3x position at 1.352 and have one more entry order of 1/3x position at 1.362 (if price retraces there. current price is 1.365). My stop for full position is 1.355 and have an open target as of now. This seems to me that this thing can become a bigger trend and it seems really possible that Euro touches 1.38-1.40 this week itself. The more interesting thing is if Germany-France do manage to come up with something really substantial which doesn't disappoint markets, I see no reason why Euro won't go and cross 1.45. If this scenario does unfold, Euro might be at 1.45 before Nov End.
Update: I closed at 1.365 hoping to reenter around 1.363, but price ran away from me. Reentered at 1.368 with x+1/3x+1/3x+1/3x = 2x position size. Stop: 1.359, Target: Open Would have been better had I left the trade as such without touching it. Now, if I get stopped, I will give back 70% of my total win to market, but I am ok with such risk, as upside could be 100-300 pips more. Edit: I won't increase size anymore. Just looking for it to run for a day or two and then probably book final profits, and not become too greedy.
"Whether the EFSF can safely be increased is unclear. Yield spreads between German Bunds and 10-year EFSF debt have widened from 66 to 112 basis points since early July. If yields creep much higher, the fund itself may become a problem." This is from AEP at the Telegraph. Does anyone know what he is talking about EFSF spreads?Maybe this is a synthetic number that is the weighted avg of all members CDSs?
Have a look here: http://www.efsf.europa.eu/attachment/faq_en.pdf The EFSF issues actual bonds to raise funds. The spread over German Bunds is close to a maximum at the moment (110 vs 119 bp). Also note that currently the EFSF has raised something like 44bn (if I remember correctly) of the 440bn it theoretically could.