Euro/USD looks like it's going to confirm the QTR A up. HEDJ looking very strong...definitely outpacing US.
If the Euro continues to run and the dollar keeps breaking down this will likely put a ceiling on risk assets. I would say that "if" we get bonds rallying with the Euro, then equities will probably get hit again. I think the Euro has really been on a tear here so it likely will consolidate some before breaking out further if indeed it will break out.
Short term I think eyes will be on the Press Comference after the ECB Rate Decision Thursday. Dovish, Hawkish or toothless as he has been the last couple of times.
We had major data releases and month end order flow, crap market so I called it a day early. Thread's been quiet, let me share some thoughts on the big event of the week. The French election took place outside RTH, so retail saps like me with no access to pre-market FX could only watch the action. Now I'm sure scalpers and day traders found enough when markets opened, I found nothing to excite me. The one election related trade I took, short EURGBP, was stopped out. The way to go in FX was probably Mavs approach in options. I must confess I didn't even look at that possibility, inflated IV before major events puts me off. For those who took directional bets on the Euro and got lucky, you won the lottery. The cursing and hollering from the shorts betting on third time lucky again after Brexit and Trump was pretty fierce. Those who trade the CAC and Stoxx50 probably got lucky too, you'd think Macron winning was a huge surprise given the follow through. I had a decent week though, short NZDUSD and long AUDNZD have worked nicely. Yes, bread and butter trades, nothing to do with the headlines. What I can't claim to understand, and maybe wiser heads can chip in here, is why in a risk on environment the commodity currencies got taken to the cleaners. CAD I can understand, weak oil price, but NZD especially and AUD? Not complaining, I don't need to understand why I'm making money as long as my system is working, just that it's odd. Long story short, if an event happens outside RTH, as retail you are probably just looking at a gap trade. Yes, many technicians are still looking for EURUSD to close the gap before moving higher. Me, I'm just watching ACD.
It's true that life has been good in FX land, but what caught my attention was CLS Group Holdings providing settlement services for FX. I always thought that was just inter-bank, but according to Wikipedia, CLS handles over half the daily global FX transactions. That is just massive! https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...-organic&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/CLS_Group
More good stuff from Brett: Saturday, April 29, 2017 Three Ways to Move Forward as a Trader I found an excellent way to assess experienced traders. Simply ask them to show you what, specifically, they are now working on in their trading. The best traders--including the ones experiencing current success--can show you concrete improvements that they are making to their research, their trading, their risk management, and/or their trading business. Not intentions to make changes, not journal entries about changing, but actual, concrete, documented change efforts. Here are a few things traders I've been working with have been doing to get to that next level of performance: 1) Teaming up with other traders to create unique opportunities - The successful traders seek out others different from themselves and skilled/knowledgeable/experienced in different areas to create mutual learning and synergies. A talented discretionary trader might team up with a talented quantitative researcher; someone expert in trading one region of the world will team up with someone with extensive background in a different region; etc. In romance as in business, when the right people pair up one plus one becomes three: everyone makes everyone else better. 2) Becoming granular and working to improve specific trading processes - One trader I know is looking to high frequency market information to improve his entry execution, measuring results by tracking the adverse and favorable excursions of each trade. Another trader is building specific time into his schedule to implement creativity exercises and generate more unique and promising trading ideas. Yet another trader is implementing a system for sizing trades up and taking greater advantage of the trades found, through his research, to have the best hit rate and profitability. The more detailed and sustained the improvement process, the more likely it is to result in meaningful change. 3) Learning new tricks - I recently spoke with a trader who has created a unique correlation measure to assess when money is flowing into multiple macro assets at the same time as a way of tracking the activity of large money managers. A creative trader is experimenting with generating sound patterns from the activity on charts, so that he can track more markets by simultaneously watching and hearing different markets. When one market demonstrates the right patterns, he moves to trading it, so that he is always trading where there is opportunity for what he does. Still another trader has added mean-reversion setups to his momentum ones so that he has different ways of trading slow versus busy markets. These traders make money in different market conditions and in different markets, while others remain one-trick ponies. Every successful company has an active research and development pipeline. They are creating tomorrow's products and services and testing them out, because they know that is where tomorrow's profits will come from. The auto manufacturer is working on driverless vehicles; the software company is building new virtual reality applications; the publishing company is electronically archiving chapters from all their books so that readers can, on the fly, select chapters from different books and create their own electronic texts. What is your R&D pipeline? How full is it? How much time do you spend in developing tomorrow's trading? How, specifically, are you going to be better by the end of this year? Those are some of the strategic questions that help guide the career success of traders.
Hello Mav, Just wanted to say this ole government administrator is easing back and taking less contract work, and I plan to do more than just move my mutual funds around. So ...... I've been studying your specific posts on entries, exits, targets, tells .... etc. And, damn man ...... you've given us some really really great material over the years. I do so much appreciate it and I'm hopeful more people don't find it. Thank you sir!!