One small trade at a time ...

So, after what's seemed like a long hiatus (but hasn't really been one), Jordan taught the Forex class again last night. Got me looking at the charts more closely, and pointed out why shorting the EUR/JPY may not be such a hot idea.

So, I happily looked at the 5-minute chart on the EURJPY. Yes, you read that right. The 5-minute chart. Here it is:


As you can see, there's a distinct 3/5 ema bounce off the 13 ema, and all are well below the 200 sma. So, it looks like a good trade. Also, it's just in the 23% to 50% range of the Fibonacci retracement. So, I thought it could come up to 164.52 or so.

I know, I should have spotted a trade on the HOURLY timeframe. Let's pretend that's what I did. Really. So, this is what the Hourly timeframe looked like (at 1:00 a.m., everything makes sense to me ... brains NOT required, apparently).
Okay, that looks like it could mean anything. That's why I thought this was a shorting opportunity ... but, as Jordan pointed out, there's not rally a guarantee of that. Which is why I looked at the 5 minute, to see what's actually going on there.

And finally, to confirm on the daily:
Hmm ... look at that lovely uptrend! Okay, this looked like a nice trade to take.

So, I got in at 164.33 and put a limit at 1.52 ... a nice, small trade. Took a while, but it did actually pay off after a bit of drifting up and down.

So, that was a nice 15% profit. Yes, just take my word for it.

Then, I looked a little closer at the hourly timeframe on the EUR/JPY. Looks like we're in for a beautiful upswing. So, tried to get back in right away. Got in at 164.68 (that trended up RAPIDLY!). Set a really high target at 165.45 ... that's over a 100-pip move from my original entry at 164.33. Better yet, it's just below the Fibonacci 78.6 line at 165.50. I think there will be major resistance at 165.50, so why risk it. I have 2 entire Fib intervals of profit if I'm right.

This trade only started at about 2:49 a.m. (Yes, I lost some sleep last night.) Since I put in such a wide limit, I decided my stop also needs to be wide, otherwise, I'll get stopped out before I'm ready and before it's really moved.

Well, all day today, the EUR/JPY has been moving up and down and up and down and up and down! Sigh - very frustrating. Especially that Metastock, when I got home, had actually had a spike up to 166.20 at around 4 pm - but FxSol, my trading platform, hadn't registered that spike at all, so I didn't get my limit exercised.
Anyway, as you see in that chart, it FINALLY did actually hit 165.45 just before class started.

Whoo hooo! I did it. That would have been a 100% move for me, but remember I missed a bit of it between the two trades. So wheee - I still made over 80% profit!

I guess I am learning a little bit every single day. This is my best planned trade, even though I've seen bigger wins - they just weren't planned, rather were taking advantage of a short run-up or downturn that trended very rapidly! Had to be quick on the trigger on those other trades ... this was slow and unexpectedly relaxed!

Maybe I don't have to be a day trader all the time! I was in this trade for over 18 hours! :)