I think you need to give this move more credit, if they were just out to trigger stops it wouldn't have lasted this long. I don't think it's a coincidence that the 30-yr has also started to clear resistances.
In keeping w/the theme of this thread, does anyone have any comments on the fact that this latest rally/breakout in the GBP is more due to US weakness than the GBP's own strength, since UK data has been mostly negative as of late? Also, just a quick mention of the technical position, that was very possibly some climatic vol on a parabolic rally that we've just seen these last couple of days... H
£ led the dollar move - it broke first on the cable. Eur /£ has fallen whilst the dollar has weakened and that is quite rare and look at the steling crosses especially the yen. And UK data hasn't been that weak - UK house prices up 1.4% on the month is a key indicator - that underpins everything.
"... what are those other catalysts? And which of these are not viewed relative to interest rates and how so?..." - News - GDP - CPI....
Now look at £ weakeness overnight - weakened against the $ yen and euro - and we had a very weak BRC survey overnight. You cant ignore fundamentals - especially with £,
Thanks for all the comments in this thread so far, they've been a great help. I'm very new to the "fundamental" side of trading and at this point I'm trying to learn what to learn. What I mean by that is that I believe the first thing one has to accomplish when undertaking anything new, is to get a "grasp" of the big picture. A framework to build and expand upon. For instance I've managed and owned several businesses in my day, mostly restaurants. In any business there are a thousand little details; in the food business one must monitor paper and food costs, employment cost, customer service, cleaning and upkeep, promotion, inventory, equipment purchasing and maintenance, insurance, rent, and so on. (And many of these subsets may have their own subsets.) The thousand details of which one must keep track will quickly overwhelm the owner/manager who is not able to grasp an overall perspective of the business he's trying to run, to understand what is more/less important, and what is more/less important at various times, and how every piece fits together w/in the whole. It is simply impossible to run a business effectively until one has achieved that "grasp". To be clear, I'm not trying to become an authority in UK economics, or, God forbid, a predictor of economic conditions. My main interest lies in watching how the mkts react to economic news, and using that combined w/technical analysis, to get a better understanding of who is participating in the mkts, and when and why, as per Kerr (see my link about Kerr's "philosophy" in my first post for an explanation, if interested.) However, to do this effectively, I think one must have at least an overall general knowledge of economics, as well as an understanding of what may be more or less important at a particular time and why. So what I've done is to create a preliminary "mindmap" of UK economic indicators, gathered mostly from 3 sites - TradingEducation.com, Daily FX, and the Econ calendar from Forex Factory - in an attempt to see what economic conditions are being monitored. To the far right are the actual econ reports, and to the left (in blue and bold) the particular relevant economic component as I understand it so far. I can't stress enough that this is a work-in-progress and is very shallow right now, as per my ignorance of the subject. I started off the thread stating that, as I understood it, when it comes to currencies, it was all about interest rates, therefore it's about the state-of-the-economy, inflation-recession-growing-slowing-(stagnation?). So in a sense, perhaps all economic indicators would be subsets of these aspects and the "economic tree" that I'm trying to build should be re-arranged to reflect that. What I've done here is very simplistic, I just tried to relate the particular indicator to its most obvious economic component as I understand it from reading the commentaries on the various sites. At the very bottom I've included a category of other mkt components that have cropped up in my studies. The one thing that should be clear from this mindmap is what I'm attempting to do, which is to get the UK economy, as the old joke goes, "organizised". Any comments or suggestions regarding blatant errors, refinements, general thoughts, whatever, would be appreciated. http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b313/Hcour/GBPMindMap2.gif Thanks, Harold
Fundamental analysis is not required and in fact may get in the way of your being a successful trader. Fundamental analysis is to be largely disregarded as the fundamentals show up in the technicals. By the way, I stopped reading your post a few lines in. --way too long. I'm sure others did as well.
And yet you were able to dismiss Kerr's trading philosophy and my strategy in a few sentences while apparently having no idea what it involves or even reading my post. Next. H
Yes, this is correct. Trade the charts, keep losses to a minimum. Forget Fundamental analysis. Thank you for your time.
Normally I would let Buy-Sell's comments pass, as it's quite OT to this thread (his trading methodology vs another), but I'm in the mood so I'll say this, in regard to the way threads are conducted here at good old ET. Buy-Sell (if that is your real name!) has, apparently, found his own successful way to trade, thru TA, which he states is The One True Path. I don't doubt his success nor the viability of his methodology and I applaud him for it. But where does it belong in this particular thread? Well, nowhere. If one was to make a Mindmap for ET threads, one of the main branches would be "My Way or the Highway" and then everybody branches off into arguments about what works and what doesn't until there is chaos and the original topic becomes null and void. BS says TA is the way, the only way. But does he mean Wyckoffian TA, price and volume, or Elliot Wave, or is he using Fibs or Pivot Points, or Market Profile; does he use patterns, via Edwards and Magee, cups and handles and H&S, trendlines; does he use Gann or astrology; candlesticks, cycles, or seasonals; does he use bottom-pane indicators and if so, which and how and what are the parameters? Does he use some bastardized combination of certain of these which have worked for him? There are, literally, when it comes down to the individual, thousands of ways to trade. Finding what works for you is a wonderful thing and should be expressed on ET if you feel like doing it. But to step into a thread that has mostly been about one way of trading, in this case combining a specific analysis of Fundamental conditions (via Kerr) w/another specific way of TA (via Wyckoff), and saying that particular method is garbage because it's not your own, is trivial and petty. If I'm an idiot tell me why, specifically, related to this methodolgy, not some generalized opinion which simply says that because you don't do it it has no validity. H