Good Morning Everyone. I just got filled at 1.1876 and am long the EC from here. This is a key level. Focus on this and play your longs up from here. A solid short term target is 1.1910, but 1.1900 will need to push thru. If 1.1876 gives way, look for a pullback near this level and 1.1847 will be the next stop down. Sorry for the limited info, but I am traveling today. Good luck and I will check back later this evening. DRT
Nice entry. I'd thought they at least needed to tag 1.1850 before a reversal but looks like I'm wrong.
Well looks like I got lucky on this one. Maybe I should just put my trades in and leave everyday. Long at 1.1876, closed at 1.1947. 71 points per contract. Bad thing is I was not able to close this out before the market closed. I am going to get out asap on Sunday night and re-think. Hope you guys made some money today. DRT
It is definitely going to get a little more challenging. Things are kind of in between key levels which make it more difficult early on next week. Should be interesting. I had 1.1850 as a key level also.
Volume was quite high today. Looks like around 209,535 contracts. Interestingly, it is spread fairly evenly thru the entire range. Since I wasn't watching today, I have no idea how price reacted around these levels. Not sure if there was a lot of short covering or new buying. At first glance it seems like short covering to me.
In October of 2002, I was driving and was listening to a financial channel on the radio. It was obviously a snake oil type broadcast trying to lure unknowledgable investors to fork over a minimum of $5000 and send to the sponsor to be invested in the wonderful world of Foreign Exchange. At the time, the Euro was trading just under parity around .0098. There were all kinds of scenarios being given by the host about where the Euro may go. Kind of like some oil investment commercials you may here from time to time. This was the first time I had every heard of trading currencies. In fact, my only experience in any type of financial investment up until this time was buying Microsoft, Lowes, Amgen and LCI for my 401k account thru a broker at Dean Witter. I did pretty well with this one. I credit the radio show with getting me interested in Forex. I am a type "A" personality. This Forex thing really fascinated me and I began to see some major $ signs. Let's call it infatuation at its finest. It wasn't long before I somehow managed to find an extra $15,000 and I wired it off in a hurry to FXCM. Okay, now I'm ready. Let's build my wealth to unheard of levels. I think it took about 2-3 weeeks and I had lost $14,100 of my grubstake. I was a complete idiot. I am educated (some would say) and consider myself to be have fairly adequate "common sense". I signed up for some signal sevice that was located somewhere in the Orient, set up my trusty cell phone to get the signals, laid on the couch at night with my laptop. I was smart, I thought to myself. Most people have no idea how to get wealthy. I am different. I lost almost all my capital. No planning. No practice account. Just dive right in. I am a very determined man and would not let this happen to me. I had heard others talk about how 98% of all traders lose everything early on in the journey. Not me, I am an educated man. At this point, I went back to the drawing board and found a little more trading capital. I decided the Forex world was not for me so I decided I would take a shot at the fast moving world of Equity Indexes. You know, the minis. S&P, Dow, and this Russell thing that was just getting going. This is where it's at I can remember thinking. I closed my account at FXCM and sent $5000 to TradeStation because I really liked their platform. Well....I continued to gyrate for another couple years doing this. Oh yeah, I also found another $30,000 in trading capital because I basically was on a major roller coaster ride in my equity. Keep it up, don't quit, I am an educated man you know. Always bear in mind that your own resolution to success is more important than any other one thing. --- Abraham Lincoln Somewhere in late 2004, I gave up the index trading. I began to re-focus on Forex again. I gave up indicators like MACD and CCI for good. This is a joke. I am an educated man after all. I cleared my charts of all things colorful and began to identify "value" and re-think the "why" part of the being a trader. I began to really work on the "self" part and try to understand the profession of trading and view it as more of an art form. You really have to ask yourself...."Do I want it?". "Do I really want to be a trader?" If so, "why in the heck do I want to be a trader?" For me, the list of answers is easy. Don't get me wrong, the money part is very near the top of the list, but it is not the complete answer. Next, "what are you willing to give to get it". If the answer is anything short of "continuous persistent action towards its attainment"...then I would move on and do someting else. Becoming a successful trader is without a doubt the most difficult task on the face of the earth bar none. If you think it is easy, even somewhat easy, you are absolutely fooling yourself. I can't even begin to convey to you the amount of time I pour into this goal. I stare at charts 15-20 hours per day, I sleep on the couch with my laptop, I duck into wi-fi spots to check the market, etc., etc. As far as my methodolgy, it is very simple and basic. It centers around the "Why?" part of the equation. You need to develop, test, change, memorize, curse, change, write down, curse, develop, and change your own methodology. Don't ask for it from someone else or pay for it from someone else. Are you educated? Think about this for a moment and I am sure it will begin to be clearer. I may try to post some thoughts on this for others to help you along this path if anyone is interested. To me, this is a passion. I love it. It has taken me about 3 years to really get it and begin to grow my wealth. I can now make more money in a week than my corporate job with a Fortune 50 company yielded for an entire year. I have paid substantially to get to this point in my life and I am only at the beginning as far as I am concerned. Soooooo, this is the long answer. I am just like you. I post here on ET because nobody else understands in my circle. My family thinks I am really strange. "Daddy, why do you have all those big screens on your desk?" There is really no one to talk to except you fellow traders who share the same vision. I want to help others if I can in some way. If it is thru a forum, or a few emails then so be it. I am not good in person anyway. Destiny is not a matter of chance; it's a matter of choice. It is not a thing to be waited for; it is a thing to be achieved. --- William Jennings Bryan DRT
Review of Week 2-12 to 2-17 I wanted to go back and see how we did on the posts here this week. Euro FX (EC) 2-13 10 Ticks 2-15 84 Ticks 2-16 50 Ticks 2-17 71 TIcks Total for week was 215 ticks or $2,687.50 profit per contract traded. They won't all be this good. Just for inspirational and motivational purposes...let's say you were able to trade 50 contracts comfortably. You would have made $134,375 this week. I know, I know...but you have to have reach goals to keep you focused. I made a couple trades of the Yen futures contract also. I lost a few ticks on this one. I have not been posting these trades because I like to concentrate on the Euro. Maybe we can post the JY trades as time goes on. DRT
Notes from Inspector Clouseau Do you guys like a good board game? Okay, let's look back a few days. How about last Friday 2-10-2006? Volume was 267,852. As best I can tell, this was the single largest volume day in CME Euro FX history. A down day if I recall around 80 ticks. Now, what happened in the days following (this past week). Well the bottom did not fall out. In fact, most days closed either up or in the middle of the day's range. Hmmm? So the week went by rather quietly and on Friday 2-17-2005 approximately 153,731 contracts traded in the time period between 10 AM and 2 PM NY session. As best I can tell this is the by far the single largest exchange ever in a 4 hour time frame. There is a clue here somewhere? What was happening? I was out on Friday, but I saw a thread discussing huge numbers appearing in the bid/ask columns. Numbers like 30,000. Maybe an anomoly, maybe manipulation of some sort, but I do not think so. One thing is for sure, the market was not up 200 points in either direction, so there was a definite exchange of perceived value on Friday. Considering the market has been heading down for a while...was there perceived value by the broader market at these levels? In other words, was someone buying at bargain prices heading into next week? I think we were buyers on almost every occassion. We sure thought so. Were the big players using this small up day to sell into higher levels? The story is not as clear on a weekly chart. Here volume was well below average, but the price candle closed up for the week near the top of the range. Hmmm? And after that huge down volume day last Friday. Strange isn't it? We really don't know, but I think we are about ready to find out. The message here is be careful. Many times when this type of volume occurs there is a continuation of the move before the turn. On a positve note, hopefully we can make some money and direction will be better defined this coming week. If I had to guess (and it is always just a guess because we can't actually pretend to know what is going to happen) I would say things are heading up but I don't really know. DRT