What to do…

I’ve been getting some questions about Forex Shocker and which pairs I trade and the settings to go along with them so I thought that I could post them. First of all I use both version 1.1 and version 2.0. I do because they trade different from each other and not during overlapping hours (with default settings).

With 1.1 I trade EURUSD, USDCHF, GBPUSD and EURGBP. I use default settings, but I trade fixed lot sizes. I haven’t tried the Money Management (MM) function in Shocker at all actually, I just prefer fixed lots in all EAs I run. The (conservative) lot sizes used currently for my $2000 account on JadeFX is:

EURUSD: 0.1
USDCHF: 0.1
GBPUSD: 0.05
EURGBP: 0.1

With 2.0 I trade EURUSD, USDCHF and GBPUSD. Default settings here too. Since it is summertime now I use the DST setting in v2.0. Fixed lotsizes of:

EURUSD: 0.2
USDCHF: 0.1
GBPUSD: 0.1

You can calculate the maximum loss in $ with a stoploss of 34 pips (I think it is 30-34 pips depending on pair). If a FS2.0 EURUSD trade would hit the stoploss it would cost about $68, which is 3.4% of the $2000. But it is important to understand that Forex Shocker often opens double trades (the default setting is to allow up to two concurrent trades, you can limit this if you like, but I have found it to perform better with the default setting). This means that you stand to loose double that, which would give about 7%. This is a lot, but with this account I’m willing to risk it, since I use it only for scalping.

Yesterday I bought a second license and will start to trade it on my $7000 account at The Collective FX. I don’t want to take high risks in that account so I probably will use about the same lot sizes there. The biggest risk then would be about 2% if double trades is taken by FS 2.0 in EURUSD. I will demo trade for a while before going live at CFX thou, Forex Shocker is broker sensitive so it is not guaranteed that the pairs I trade at JadeFX is the best at CFX. It’s even a possibility that it isn’t profitable at all, but that is a slim chance I think. I read in Donna’s forum that some people have been getting great results with USDCAD recently, a pair that I even stopped in demo on JadeFX because it was not doing very well.

Forex Shocker costs $129 today but they will hike it to $249 tomorrow, so if you’re interested, think about it. I still think it is worth $249, but I would personally hesitate on that kind of money for a product without refund possibility. Additional licenses costs $99 right now but will cost $149 tomorrow.

I wrote about decreased cashback at Alpari UK about a month ago, when Cashbackforex stated that it would only pay 0.1 pips back. Now they’ve increased it to 0.25 pips. This is still down a lot from the original 0.42 pips of course, but this was enough for me to reevaluate my decision to close the account. I will keep trading it now. Performance of FAP Turbo and MegaDroid is good enough to justify it. I probably will fund the account at FXCM UK also eventually, but now I’m not in as much of a hurry.

It might seem like nothing, but cashback is serious money when trading scalpers. Don’t underestimate it.

Another interesting week. It is really addicting to watch the charts and account statements nowadays. EURCHF is still plummeting as a result of worries for the PIGS debt situation, and it will probably take a while to restore faith here. Especially since a lot of the debt had been hidden by sneaky bankers (in both the EU and the US). Makes us wonder if really everything is on the table now. But eventually there will be a resolution to the debt crisis, even if it means that some of the PIGS is forced out of the Euro.

AUDNZD seems to have recovered a bit (trading below 1.2850 right now), but I fear it is just temporarily since there really haven’t been any news out of NZ that is supporting a higher valuation of the NZD vs the strong AUD. I still fully expect the pair to trade in the upper range until the rate difference is reduced or even zero (right now the difference is 1.5%).

Other than the AUDNZD and EURCHF I’ve been manually trading a bit in EURCAD this week. The EUR is weak and the CAD is steaming which makes it quite easy to spot the trend. Check the accounts below.

Read more…

One of my favorite financial writers, Edward Harrison (of CreditWritedowns.com) made two very interesting posts today:

http://seekingalpha.com/article/195090-anticipating-eurozone-collapse

http://seekingalpha.com/article/195224-ten-ways-to-spot-a-bubble-in-china

Also J.S Kim made a post about the current focus on US vs China that was very interesting (Kim is very pro physical gold and silver and con fiat currencies):

http://seekingalpha.com/article/195097-in-the-real-world-series-of-poker-the-stakes-are-default-of-sovereign-debt

I must say that I am very terrified for the outcome for the Eurozone. I live in Sweden, we don’t have the € here (I personally voted against it as I didn’t trust the ECB), but of course we are going to be heavily affected anyhow. A lot of our exports are denominated in Euros as this intra-EU trade is very significant for Sweden. The same goes for all countries around the Eurozone (UK, Switzerland and so on). This in concert with the possible Chinese bubble and the possibility of a double dip in both US and EU sure doesn’t look good. If there is a bubble in China and it busts of course the resource producing countries like Australia, Brazil, Canada and Russia (and numerous others) will experience lowered export and price in many commodities like metals and oil will be effected.  The AUD is very strong today because the increase in Chinese import of resources from the continent.

If we have a failure in the Eurozone, a double dip in the stock markets globally, a bust in China and 1 trillion of petrodollars looking for alternative investments, what should one do? Buy gold I think. Clearly the central bankers think all problems are solved by printing more money (I got 1000 trillion of Zimbabwe dollars from a seller on Ebay for £15 last week. I  think it will look good framed on the wall above my desk.). China seems to understand that gold is the only currency that have survived the fall of great empires in the past for a reason. I think the Arabs are as smart and will shift their profits over to gold purchases (covertly of course).

Also, just a small remark. I have increasingly seen the word ‘endgame’ being used in articles the last few weeks. As a poker player I’m very familiar with this concept as the final phase in a multi table tournament, when you’re down to the final table. I don’t quite like the notion in financial discussions as I really don’t think the “tournament” ever will be over, but still I find it interesting that many writers now use the term. Somehow it says quite a lot on their view of current events…

Another trading week closed. The movement downward in EURCHF is putting some serious strain on my Alpari UK and Forex.com/UK accounts. AUDNZD moved down to, and even below, 1.29 this week which really helped my CFX account. I have some open buy positions caught up there thou, didn’t expect it to reverse quite so quickly. Read more…

Not brain surgery, but none the less true. Might be good to print out and post next to your workstation and check now and then. Perhaps it will save some of us the next time it is too-good-to-be-true. I especially like lesson 2, 3 and 4.

http://www.creditwritedowns.com/2010/02/montier-was-it-all-just-a-bad-dream-or-ten-lessons-not-learnt.html

This week most of my profits actually come from manual trades, as opposed to automatic ones that usually make up 100% of my trading. I am by no means a manual trader, but I have been making some manual buys in AUDNZD as hedges to my open positions. I still have a few open (that is negative now, but I’ll keep them til we’re at 1.2850, which feels “safe” or hits 1.31 again).

There was no trading on my JadeFX account this week as it has been moved to the new liquidity provider. I’ve gotten a new VPS from Jade, which now sports 2 gig ram instead of 1 gig, and have been demo trading from it during the week. I will keep demo trading only today and start easy with just a few charts live tomorrow. Read more…

As some might know I’ve been a bit bullish about Gold (and Silver) now and then. But I can’t really say that I’ve been a goldbug. Well, this might have changed today. I just wish I would have found this excellent article back in 2006, but chances are that I wouldn’t have taken the time to read it then. The change in the last four years shouldn’t be news to anyone.

Check it out: http://www.safehaven.com/article-5205.htm

I already have some gold (via ETFs) in my portfolio and I probably will increase the commitment gradually. I’m also contemplating a more active strategy using the possibility to trade gold on the spot market via many MT4 brokers (the XAUUSD symbol). But as we all know, if things actually happen like in the article above, paper-gold (anything that you don’t physically control) is probably just as bad as all other paper (like USD notes). Therefore I will try to get my hands on some physical gold to keep safe somewhere.

Just found a nice angle on debt and creation of money. Lets hope the bankers find a way to scale out of their practices rather than the inevitable Armageddon that would ensue if more people understood this.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/features/7280559/Our-world-balances-on-a-sea-of-debt.html

This must have been the hardest week of my brief Forex trading career. As AUDNZD rose well above it’s 10-year high the two biggest accounts below was stretched very thin. The account at CFX was just a few hundred dollars away from getting positions stopped out, luckily my deposit from the week before eventually made it there, in time for the push above 1.31. Because price is above 1.2967 (which I used as trade cutoff) those accounts really haven’t been trading much last week. Read more…