ForexSpirit

The second half of September continued the trend experienced in the first half: I was repeatedly whipsawed out of trades. My trailing stop loss of 50 pips was totally inadequate given the huge volatility we’ve seen recently.

In the space of just over a week we had the biggest one day moves in both directions for the EUR/USD since its inception. September 22 saw the biggest up move ever. This was on a Monday following that weekend’s announcement by the US Treasury of the $700 billion bailout proposal. The biggest one day drop occurred on September 30, the day after the House of Representatives shot down the bill on its first vote.

Amazingly enough I was not in the market for either major move. I had attempted to jump aboard during the Asian session on September 21 but got taken out prior to the major liftoff

I placed 16 trades during the month which is definitely higher than normal. They breakdown as follows: 2 wins, 2 breakeven and 12 losses.

The preponderance of losses probably means that there is no surprise that my equity change for the month was -22.195%.

The US dollar strength exhibited over the last couple of months looks to be more than just a simple correction right now, especially given the huge amounts of capital that have flown to safety in US treasuries and other dollar denominated assets during the past two weeks.