isa's short term trading journal

[isatrader]

I took profits on my medium term Palladium short just before the close tonight as I'm concerned that EURUSD was hovering at the key 1.41 level after a strong move down to there this week. The moves have been sharp in both directions all week so my concern is the Dollar index could sell off a bit on the open on Sunday night and that would give commodities a bounce again and wipe out this weeks excellent profits. It looks possible to me as a number of commodities are at or near support levels so I booked my profits the Palladium and Gold shorts I had on with nice gains in both. Below is the closing trades and charts:

Closing Trade

Gold Rolling Spread
Direction: Short

Entry: 1504
Exit: 1492.7

Percentage Gain: 1.25%

ATR Adjusted Percentage Gain: 0.62%

Trade Grade: C

Closing Trade

Palladium June Spread
Direction: Short

Entry: 730.98
Exit: 711.20

Percentage Gain: 2.20%

ATR Adjusted Percentage Gain: 1.50%

Trade Grade: A-

The tally for the week was 5 trades. 4 wins and 1 loss and I added 5.41% to my account which was very pleasing after a few bad weeks previously. I'm still bearish on the metals so I'm going to be looking for a good entry point for further shorting.

 

[isatrader]

I've gone long Gold at the offer price of 1491.9 after a buy confirmed signal on the 30 minute charts. I'm going to try and do one of these a night and let it play out while I sleep as I think one of the major hindrances to my trading is me taking profits too soon and also I like the fact that ranges in the Asian session are much smaller so I can use a much tighter stop loss and decrease my risk.

Attached is the entry chart

 

[isatrader]

I'm short GBPJPY from 130.814 for a swing trade with a target of 125.

Attached is the entry charts

 

[isatrader]

I've gone long Gold at the offer price of 1491.9 after a buy confirmed signal on the 30 minute charts. I'm going to try and do one of these a night and let it play out while I sleep as I think one of the major hindrances to my trading is me taking profits too soon and also I like the fact that ranges in the Asian session are much smaller so I can use a much tighter stop loss and decrease my risk.

Attached is the entry chart

The short term downtrend line has held Gold at bay this morning and a small double top has formed and broken down so I exited just above my breakeven for a small profit. Judging by the strength of the move it looks like gold is breaking down.

Closing Trade

Gold Rolling Spread
Direction: Long

Entry: 1491.9
Exit: 1492.4

Percentage Gain: 0.03%

ATR Adjusted Percentage Gain: 0.06%

Trade Grade: C-

Attached is the 15 minute chart

 

[isatrader]

I've gone short Palladium at the bid price of 704.8

This is a medium term position so my target is down at 550. See my previous post for entry reasons and analysis http://www.trade2win.com/boards/tra...hort-term-trading-journal-87.html#post1548348

Attached is the 2 hour chart

 

[isatrader]

Positions Update

I've had a few trades this week in GBPJPY and Gold. The initial GBPJPY trade made a small loss but the second trade did slightly better, so a small profit on that overall.

I took another overnight trade last night as I observed Gold failed to breach 1500 and was under the 100 bar moving average on the 2 hour chart and the downtrend line. So I thought the confluence of resistance provided an opportunity for a low risk setup with a tight stop just above 1500. I was a bit too eager on my entry point though so I didn't do as good as I should have but I sold out at 1490 this morning for a 43 point gain as I could see there was a lot of resistance there from the previous few days.

The longer term palladium short has gone a bit offside this week but it failed to make a new short term high last night and has come back down a bit. I think it depends on where the Euro and Gold go at the moment, which both are having technical bounces, as were oversold short term so it could stay in negative territory for a while longer yet. But I still believe it's got a good chance of going down to the 550 level target I have it just needs to break down below 680 for this one sided trade to break down IMO.

 

[isatrader]

I've opened three new trades today. The first one was an S&P 500 short which was my one trade a week pick at the weekend. A full write up of my reasons from Saturday can be found in that thread here:

http://www.trade2win.com/boards/swing-position-trading/116688-one-trade-week-145.html#post1562492

It has turned out to be one of my better picks this year so far, but I wasn't able to enter until this afternoon as I needed to wait for it to pull back to resistance after Mondays break down and for it to then show further weakness which it did. So I got in at 4.17pm this afternoon as the Nasdaq was looking very weak and the S&P was starting to turn down again as well.

My downside target is 1300 initially, but I think it could get down to 1250 quite easily or even lower over the next few weeks.

The second trade was a new one for me but I thought it would be an interesting area to try out as it's mainly played by the professionals only, but I read up on it and think that the risk reward is excellent right now. So the trade was selling Short Sterling interest rates.

I've attached the weekly chart which you can see is very near the previous high from last year at 99.04 which means that the market was pricing an interest rate in Dec 11 at 0.96% I believe. So my entry bid price was 98.97 and it has 0.02 point spread. So at that price the market is pricing an interest rate in Dec 11 at 1.03%. No one knows what the interest rate is going to be, but I think the risk reward is excellent as there's a good chance of some movement in the interest rate and it's highly probable to be higher than the current 0.5%, so my bet is really one of time as I'm betting that the rate will move higher this year.

My final trade/bet was in Euribor Dec 11 interest rates. As you can see from that chart the market is currently pricing in almost 2% for Europe, but the price action suggests the market is reconsidering this as a triple bottom has formed and it's broken above and held the 100 day moving average. So I've gone long the Euribor Dec 11 spread at 98.07 offer price with a target at 98.75 (1.25% interest rate)

Attached are the charts