A pretty wild day in the markets to round out the month. US 4th quarter GDP was the main talking point coming in at -6.2% (forecast: -5.4%).

EUR/USD was pushing down to 1.2600 on the release of the news. There was no follow through on the worse than expected number which seemed to indicate it had already been pretty much baked into price already.

Then the fun really started with a quick move up 100 pips to above 1.2700. After a small breather it was back down 100 pips in double quick time. After seeing another Friday rollarcoaster unfold I decided I was going to be safer just sitting it out on the sidelines. It certainly seems to me that euro likes to go on a tear pretty much every Friday. With month end book closing also taking place today I didn’t want to be a hero.

I’m happy with my two profitable scalps for the day.

I’m even happier with my trading performance this week and feel very positive and comfortable with the current state of my trading plan and how I’ve been able to implement it over the past eight days. It is still early days yet in determining how robust things are. I figure it will take at least two months before I can form any solid conclusions, especially if my experiences over the past six months are anything to go by. It has not been uncommon for previous versions of this scalping strategy to hum along merrily for a few weeks before coming a cropper during some wild market action.

Let’s just say I’m mildly optimistic right now.

27 February pips: 19
Weekly pip total: 101

I had a short order open at the time of posting my daily update yesterday (denoted by the red and green lines in yesterday’s chart).

That trade is being recorded on today’s ledger as it closed out after 17:00 EST (which is when I close my book for the day).

I had four further trades during today’s NY session. My daily goal is 30 pips so I’m happy that I’ve exceeded that for the first time this week.

Nothing else too dramatic to report. A nice steady, eddy day overall.

26 February pips: 43

Sometimes it’s beneficial to flex your mental acumen in different ways. I came across two great little puzzle games today that can help you do just that.

Closure
cursor*10

Even as a professional game developer I still love coming across such gaming gems. In fact, I often despair that such creativity and uniqueness seems to primarily reside in independent and hobbiest efforts.

Enjoy!

This morning I started off with having to deal with a mistake. I left a buy limit order at 1.2800 active overnight which is something I should not be doing.

The order got hit at 6:45 am EST and I was left pondering how to handle it when I opened up my trading platform and spotted it. Even though my preferred direction was to short I felt I would only do so somewhere around 1.2800 or above and so I just moved my profit target to 1.2801 for the open trade, effectively looking for a breakeven.

Things worked out and I was able to close that trade for 1 pip of profit.

I was waiting for some directionality in the afternoon but things remained rather stagnant and rangebound. I was looking to short again from the 1.2750 level for a while but price never quite made it. I didn’t want to attempt a short at 1.2740 as that was bang in the middle of the congestion, which has stung me too many times in the past. Played it safe in the end which worked out fine I guess!

25 February pips: 20

Today has turned out to be a really good test of the latest update I have made to my trading strategy.

I had two losses today and was able to recover from both of them to still end the day in positive territory. Even a single pip gain for the day still means that my trading ledger is moving in the right direction!

I had a buy limit order placed at 1.2779 this morning. I missed the anticipated bounce around that level by a few pips soon afterwards. When price did hit my resting order there was a small persistant sell off afterwards. My view was that there was going to be continued selling into the housing data being released at 9:00am EST so I cut my loss early.

My second loss of the day occurred in late morning trading. Price hit my 50 pip stop loss. With the equity markets having a positive day and all the dour housing data out of the way my view switched again to being long euro. I could see a retest of the London session’s high at 1.2830 so I held onto a trade for more than my usual 10 pips. I nabbed 40 pips on this trade and was thus able to significantly reduce my drawdown straight away.

23 February trades:

23 February pips: 18

24 February trades:

24 February pips: 1