I recently received an email about a proposal to stop remitting dollars to the Philippines on November 1 to 5(not sure). The intent is to see if the Peso would drop in value with respect to the dollar during that period. And maybe eventually force the hand of the government to devalue the Peso.
Here is my take on this issue:
The Peso is going up because the Dollar is actually going down. The dollar is weakening. All the world's currencies are going strong with respect to the dollar, it is not only confined to the Peso.
The OFW remittances are strengthening the Peso. Even though we will stop sending money for a few days, we still have to send it again some other time. This continued inflow of dollars into our country is propping up the Peso.
Devaluing the Peso could cause lead to more volatility in our currency because forex trader could come in and bring the currency back to parity. It just like the time when George Soros almost broke the Bank of England because the UK was artificially holding up the Pound when it should have been lower in value. It was done before, there is no stopping traders from doing it now on the Peso.
My suggested course of action for this situation is to sit it out. Don't stop sending money. Do not let your relatives in the Philippines suffer from late remittances. Just let the market play it out. My theory is when the United States starts to pull out from Iraq, that is the time when the dollar will start rising again.
It has been a while since I last posted on this blog. Somehow I got disenchanted of the forex market because I had a sustained loosing streak. As in very sustained. I intend to start publishing how much I have in my account right now and I only have $170 left. I am down and out. In my mind I only have two more losses to take before I declare that I am flat out.
Anyway back to my recent trade. I am betting half of my capital on this one. I am short USDJPY. Its not that I am trading on tips but I really believe in this guy. I read on the news that the famous Jim Rogers is short the dollar and long the yen, yuan and the swiss francs. Here is the Reuters article:
http://www.reuters.com/article/businessNews/idUSL2474133320071024?feedType=RSS&feedName=businessNews&rpc=23&sp=true
I believe that Jim Rogers also profited big time during the recent subprime loans rout. I read also a long time ago even before this debacle exploded that he declared that this would happen and now it did happen.
I have a new investment idol now, it is Jim Rogers. I wish I could have his mind. I could know how he thinks and sees these things.
I found this very useful link that tells how to add a mailing list to your blog.
http://www.wikihow.com/Create-a-Mailing-List-for-Blogger
I was able to create my own group at Google Groups. It is Pinoy Forex Trader Mailing List with an email of pinoy-forex-trader-mailing-list@googlegroups.com. That is where people can add themselves to get email alerts and I was able to add a widget on the side of the page for people to add their email addresses. I did some tweaks to the widget to remove the Google groups banner and made it fit on the gutter. Cool!
Best of all, everything is free. Yay!
P.S.
This is my test post for the mailing list. ;)
Iphone
It would probably be soooo cool trading forex anywhere you want as long as there is a wifi hotspot. Rather than lugging a notebook or on a pc with multiple monitors in a semi-dark room.
Got myself a sweet 87 pips on this one.
Lucky enough I left a take profit on this one. See the little blue arrow(entry) and the little green circle(take profit). I have been trading AUDJPY for 3 days now and it has been good to me. Thanks to the US interest rate cut, the AUD is looking very sweet for the carry trade. Nice!
Trade Updates
I saw this website this morning, www.shoemoney.com. There is this guy who publishes this blog about internet marketing and he has a picture of himself showing a Google Adsense check on his face. The check shows his earnings from his blog at $100k for one month. Wow! I hope I could have that someday from this blog or other blogs that I plan on making in the future.
I have been bogged down lately by other more important things. I was not even able to finish my last post. As for my trade updates, I have nothing to show lately because I have been using stop losses and sometimes take profits so usually when I look at my trades in the morning, it is already gone, nada, zip etc.
This post is about something that I thought of when I first looked at the charts today. I wish that when I look at charts I would be able to say the following:
1. The price pattern looks good for a long term trade.
2. I would just make a short term trade on this one.
3. Hey this is on a bounce, I will a close my open trade and reverse(this actually happened this morning).
4. This market is too choppy for me, I will just wait it out(hardest to do).
What do I do to say all those stuff? I have no idea, one thing that I can only think of is practice or a couple of years of practice is translated into what people call "experience".
I am just a newbie to forex trading so I say to myself "Keep on Practicin'!".
Howdy everyone! It has been a nice forex day for me. I tinkered with the 3-hr charts yesterday and placed some trades from that chart. Here is the result of those trades.
I left my GBPUSD open with a wide stop loss. Its up now and I will trail it with a stop. I will put it at break even and open another trade.
Got my first comment! Woooohooo!
Yup, this blog is on a roll!
Very pathetic, hehehe.
I have changed my comment settings. Before it was restricted, now every body can post comments.
By the way this comment if from my sister's friend "avaavs".
Here are my trade updates and new trades for today.
I added some new AUDNZD and GBPUSD trades today. I intend to come out of my hibernation today. I'll start placing small trades on selected pairs.
It seems like most of the pairs are moving again. Most pairs are caught on a range. Only AUDNZD and GBPUSD grabbed my attention because those two are on nice trending patterns.
Trading on Monday morning(Seoul Time) bothers me a bit. I want to trade before the Tokyo open when the markets are moving fast(due to the Aust/NZ markets) but OANDA is still in the weekend mode where they are still charging me the spreads for weekends which is double or triple the regular spreads. Well, next time I'll just keep my horses steady and wait for the Tokyo open.
P.S. Since most of the pairs are showing some signs of movement I am resuming my $1 test trades again.
Yes, "Musings" is a word. I looked it up on Dictionary.com. It means in contemplation or meditation. I used ctrl+L to look it up. Dictionay.com has this nifty app where you can look up words on the fly. Just highlight the suspicious word and hit ctrl+L and Viola! pop-out comes the meaning. Here is the link:
http://www.cleverkeys.com/ck.html?p=home&os=
Back to my "musings".
Here is what I saw on most of the USD pairs, they already moved 2 days before the jobs data was released. The moves were only slight compared to the movement after the data was released. But I believe that these were precipitated by 1. people who have more access to such info and 2. smart traders who can read the market very well. This may not make any sense but what I am trying to say is these market movements before major data releases could be a give-away of how the market will react to the news.
Well, I'll see how this goes.
Here are the results of yesterdays trades.
The AUDNZD is wavering so I may have to close everything on Monday.
GBPUSD was great. USD was down. I don't want to say it is due to the jobs data because I don't want to trade the news but I see that USD is down on most pairs.
I just keep seeing this on Google when I type in forex and the Philippines.
What the people behingd this "thing" are proposing is that the government would have a $1billion fund that would be used to artificially keep the peso down.
My analogy for this proposal is this:
Imagine a football field where on one team there is just one guy to protect his part of the field while on the other team there are 12 guys all lined up ready to tackle him one by one.
I think that one guy could last for some time but eventually he would retreat and run for the dugout or just plain drop dead.
That one guy is the $1billion stabilization fund and the 12 guys is the $12billion and still growing OFW remittances that come in for a year.
How can you stop us Pinoy OFW's from sending money to the Philippines? Think about that.
Here are my trades this morning. Very silent market. The forex market lately is like a herd. When one move everybody does, now almost all pairs are very tamed.
I have not checked the news for sometime so I don't know what they are waiting for. But it looks like its is something significant that its making the whole world stop and wait.
Or maybe its just Monday.
Here is my long promised post regarding my personal risk equation:
Returns = Risk
How was I able to know that this equation is true?
My recent trading history accurately shows how it my account was almost wiped out by this equation.
The recent run by the carry trade unwinding has caused my trades to load up on pips. This then gave me the confidence to take on more risks. The unwinding continued and I am getting larger returns. And then came that day when the returns got so crazy that I added more lots which means more risk. More returns begets more risk. But hey the markets just halted and said "Wait a minute, maybe we are over-reacting". The market floored! But I did not stop there I kept playing catch up and trading max lots. Of course playing catch up does not work. I got wiped out. I was taught one of the bigger lesson in trading life, which is not to be too greedy/risky.
And that is how I applied the risk/return equation. Ouch!
Here is the result of my recent trades. Its a bummer.
Lately I am feeling that I am not in tune with the markets and also life in general. I am pondering with the question of why I cannot learn forex trading and be a winner rather than keep on losing on and on.
Then a realization hit me that I had not been putting my 100% into learning forex. I am not practicing trades as I should have. I thought that I have no reason to say that I am a failure in forex after I failed once or twice or so many times because I still have not done any homework yet. I cannot fail if I still have not done anything yet. The only time that I can say that I failed is when I have already done everything and I still keep losing. Then all my effort have gone to naught, it is then shall I know that I have failed.
But for now I say, Keep on learning and keep on paper trading!
I recently added Google Analytics to my site. It is sooooo cool. Everytime I open my notebook, that is the first site I go to. Maybe I should change my homepage to that.
Google Analytics tracks the stats of my site. I can see all the page hits, where those people are who viewed my site are, how long they were on my site, etc. Now it made me think that somehow it is creepy that anywhere you go on the web, you are being followed.
Anyway I saw that they were guys from Canada, UK, Brazil, US and Manila(Makati specifically). Of course those guys who are from the US and Manila include my sisters, but for all the other, thanks for visiting! I hope you come back.
It seems like forex is already off to a bad start in the Philippines. If you would do a Google search for "Forex and Philippines", you will get the recent news about the Performance Forex office being raided by the NBI. But if you try "Pinoy Forex", you will find my blog on top of the list. Yey!
So if anyone would ask Google on who is the authority on "Pinoys who do Forex", that would be me. Whew! That is a very tall order for someone who just started blogging and recently got a margin call.
My point is, forex trading in the Philippines is still in the infancy of being known as a legitimate investment tool. And before it was able to reach the conscious minds our fellow citizens, it was already tagged as a scam. Take for example the FrancSwiss and the Performance Forex fiasco(I do side with PFEC because they were only the forex broker of that guy who did the scam).
It has always been my belief that for any Pinoy who is interested in investing in anything, be sure to make the necessary research and background check of what or who you are investing into before you dive into the investing game. And if you heard that investing in forex will give you huge returns it is probably true but then you should also remember that it also entails huge risks.
So to end this post I am finishing off with this simple equation of investing:
Returns = Risk
Hey this is a good topic for my next post! Ok watch out for it next time.
My daily results are fantastic but I cannot say the same for my intra-day trades.
One thing I should remember about intra-day trading is never to let my eyes off the charts when I have open trades. If need to go somewhere(toilet), or do something else(like work), I should always leave my stops.
I am on a forex diet recently. My recent losses has forced myself to quit looking at the forex market and stop trading. Lately I was so hooked on trading that I kept jumping in and out of the market trying to get on the trend until I later realized that I was already down by so much dollars. Now I am back to square one again.
It was just yesterday that I opened my OANDA trading page again. I was trading the AUDJPY( on $1 trades of course) and I felt that this currency pair wants to eat you alive. I traded in and out trying to catch the trend but as soon as you get in, it immediately reverses itself and find yourself negative again. I did this for some time until I got frustrated and tried another active pair, which is the GBPJPY.
I liked the GBPJPY much better. The currency moves where it wants to go. It does not stop and reverse every so often like it wants to whip out every trader who steps in the market. The price moves are smoother. There are several periods during the day where the pair moves significantly which if traded properly might give you a pip or so.
I looked at the 15 min chart of the GBPJPY and saw that the pair moves significantly before and during the Tokyo, UK and NY open. Right now 2:53 AM(Seoul time) it is moving again. I don't know what is happening right now, maybe it is the near the close of the NY market.
Just to show how nice this pair is, I opened a trade before I started writing this post and placed a take profit of some pips above my entry(I just placed it before the next resistance level) and next thing I know the price jumped through my take profit. Ayos!
I will definitely do paper trading on this pair from now on and see whether I can day trade it profitably.
Here is the trading journals that I made of the past week. The results shown here are pretty fantastic. The long term trades registered up to 11,000 pips at one time and the short term I think came to about 1,000 pips in one day. I wish those pips were from legit trades, but unfortunately I just made those on $1 trades. Sayang!
Those were the crazy days. Now it seems like has the market has already awoken from their pip busting dreams.
Here are the link to my journals:
http://camacho.crane.googlepages.com/8-13-07to8-14-07.doc
http://camacho.crane.googlepages.com/8-14-07to8-15-07.doc
http://camacho.crane.googlepages.com/8-15-07to8-16-07.doc
http://camacho.crane.googlepages.com/8-16-07to8-17-07.doc
http://camacho.crane.googlepages.com/8-17-07to8-18-07.doc
This is my trading activity as of last February up to now.
http://camacho.crane.googlepages.com/tradinghistory-short.xls
For entertainment purposes only. Rated GP ;).
I created a daily trading jounal/commentary lately after my margin call. I made it so that I can keep track of what is happening to my account and the forex market during the whole 24 hours of the day.
It is also an exercise in articulation of my thoughts about the market and my trading.
Please see my next posts for my trading journal.
What does a wannabe trader do after a margin call?
Anything but trade I suppose. My broker has forced me into that predeliction. I am still happy with my broker OANDA (http://www.oanda.com/). After the margin call, they still left me with the original capital that I deposited in my account. So basically they brought me back to square one. I was able to bring my account up to 1550%+ and back. It was an exciting, educational and humbling experience.
After the carry trade dust has settled down, I am looking at my trading history as to why I got creamed.
With regards to my trading methodology, my money management sucks. I kept on trading the same amount of risk even as my account got depleted. I will remember to stop trading or minimize my risk to almost zero the moment I start getting bad trades.
As to my trading psych, it seems that it is largely swayed by the news. I tried to look for trading ideas from the news. I forced trades when I see some good news come up but end up with a loser probably because of bad timing. Recently I was able to trade better when I was not looking at any market related news.
In retrospect, I am still happy with everything that happened. I got a very expensive learning experience. Trading tuition they say. I hope this would be the first and last margin call I would ever get.
The JPY crosses are moving again. I got burned big time(300 pips and counting) on my gbpjpy short, fortunately I just put in a very minimal trade. I'll close it tomorrow on my scheduled trading time.
I did earn some pips on my CHF and AUD vs JPY longs though. I read that Australia will raise interest rates so I felt that the carry trade still has some flavor into it. "May asim pa ang Carry Trade";).
Most of the majors are moving. The GBP, JPY, EUR and AUD. No big moves seen on the USD.
I will try to close my other GBP shorts tomorrow and add to my JPY winners. I would very cautious on joining the carry trade fray though. Too much volatility on the the JPY crosses has caused me to earn (100%+) and eventually lose (75%) of my account in a span of 1 week! It was a very humbling experience. I was trading full lots during the carry trade unwind but now I am down to minimal positions to calm my nerves.