Tuesday / January 21, 2020 / 2:30 a.m. PST I just got in on the last 90 minutes of a EURGBP two-hour binary option call contract with a strike price of 0.8500. Hopefully this will make up for the AUDJPY loss. This is another $12 payout as opposed to the $15 minimum I would prefer, but I will have to take what I can get. My calculations put intraday support at 0.8505, so the structure is about as close to ideal as one can get. I suppose the only improvement would be if daily support were at the same level, which it is not. As a reminder to myself, the times I said I planned to enter positions were as follows. However, I did mention this time zone as well: The caveat does not apply in this case because this is the reversal. However, if EURGBP does something crazy and turns right back around to violate my forecast model, I will be asleep when it happens because I am going to bed now.
Tuesday / January 21, 2020 / 9:30 a.m. PST Indeed, EURGBP did turn right back around and move against me. But fortunately, it did not violate my support level until after expiry, so it was a successful trade.
Tuesday / January 21, 2020 / 9:45 a.m. PST It is looking like the 75.20 strike price is going to hold, but that was not the case when I exited this position, so no regrets. When AUDJPY climbed to the 75.50 neighborhood, my numbers indicated it would hit major resistance at 75.62... But since the dead zone had not yet arrived time wise, I entered a short position using a traditional Forex broker rather than purchase a binary option contract via Nadex. The trade was worth a respectable (for me) 22 pips or so of profit...
Tuesday / January 21, 2020 / 10:00 a.m. PST As the 10 AM to 12 Noon dead zone approached, I had a number of choices. (There was no economic data scheduled to be released, so that cleared the way for the purchase of a two-hour binary option contract.) I could have returned to AUDJPY which was right back down to my support levels, this time for the final two hours left on the Daily binary option contract, but it was only offering twelve bucks. EURJPY was nicely structured as well, but I did not like the size of its still somewhat long candlesticks. However, USDCAD was offering fifteen bucks for a 1.3080 in-the-money strike price that was above the upper band of my inner shoreline envelope (but unfortunately, not the outer one). Moreover, the pair has refused to violate that level for the past eight days, so this is the contract I decided to purchase.
The highlighted caveat (below) cannot be overemphasized... Purchasing an AUDJPY put contract would have been a mistake in that the pair is now down below 75.20 (@ 75.13). Likewise EURJPY which sunk right down to the expiry level. However USDCAD, with its relatively small-sized candlesticks and established resistance level, was never closer than five or so pips to the strike price and was still in-the-money at expiry. I have decided not to try going with one last USDCAD two-hour contract because 1.3080 is within the upper band of outer riverbank envelope, suggesting that this would be a bad idea.
Monday / January 21, 2020 / 5:23 p.m. PST Trade time is two hours away (7 PM PST). The best trade candidates right now are GBPJPY and USDJPY because both of their daily candlesticks are currently green, but their day-to-day trends are presently bearish. However, I don’t like GBPJPY because it is too capable of suddenly making monster moves and if it were to do so in the “wrong” direction, I could find myself in big trouble really quick, so this leaves USDJPY, which is at 109.92 at this hour. The upper band of the inner shoreline envelope is at 109.98 whereas the outer shoreline envelope’s upper band is at 110.104, but both of them are rising so I will have to wait for the riverbank envelope to adopt a downward slope before entering a short position (purchasing a put contract). (The tops of the routine and extreme day ranges are way up at 110.48 and 110.92.)
The riverbank envelope is not sloping downward, but at least the short-term trend has initiated a southbound leg. An in-the-money put contract is worth only about seven bucks, so to make this trade in “real life” I would have to determine that this system works virtually 100% of the time (it’s four out of four so far not counting the potential EURJPY and AUDJPY trades that I nixed) and I would need to be glued to my laptop for the next 90 minutes to make sure I abandoned ship should things turn against me, with a maximum of about a -$14 loss rather than the full -$97. The plus is that the pair has climbed to where I can use the 110.20 strike price, which is above both of the coastline envelope upper bands. With the pair currently on a downward short-term trajectory and with the size of the candlesticks formed during this hour typically being relatively small, the odds of USDJPY not being unable to climb as high as 110.20 in the next ninety minutes should be in my favor. UPDATE: With 30 minutes left the riverbank envelope looks to be turning south, so hopefully this trade is now more-or-less in the clear.
If I had stuck with all my trades (including AUDJPY) this would have made five for five for a two-day total (Sunday and Monday) of $27.75 off of what would have to have been a $200 trading account (to purchase EURJPY and AUDJPY contracts simultaneously).
Monday / January 21, 2020 / 10:15 p.m. PST This is not the hour to trade! However, AUDJPY's riverbank envelope is arguably bearish, or at the very least, it is neutral, and upper shoreline resistance is in the neighborhood of 75.40. Moreover, that day-to-day trend is also bearish, so if liquidity/volatility comes into the market in the next two hours, logic would suggest it would push the rate south rather than north. Either way, I want to observe what happens, even though all I might get out of this is a measly $8.25 ($6.25 after fees).