ForexSpirit

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
Arthur C. Clarke, “Profiles of The Future”, 1961 (Clarke’s third law)

I was prepared for it to be a relatively quiet morning but was pleasantly surprised when it turned out to be anything but. The euro bulls were out in force during the Tokyo session (mainly reserve diversification by some Asian central banks) and price was flirting with 1.4650 as I opened up my charts.

It was easy enough to don my counter trend hat and start to look for short setups.

Bias: short
Conviction: medium

The green entry was based on a breakout failure just above the 1.4643 level. I exited as price approached the most recent minor low at 1.4637. I wasn’t aiming for big gains and was happy to just grab a few pips.

As the downward pressure continued it was time to decide if 1.4635 was going to hold (and thus play it long) or if a clean break was on the cards. There was no move back up to 1.4635 so I went with the latter mindset and kept to my short bias.

I sold again and held this one for 4 pips as well. After exiting price moved up a bit more, surpassing the entry point from that last trade but not quite reaching 1.4635. I was hoping for a touch of this level and would have taken another short if I’d seen it.

Instead it turned before quite making it and I sat out the ensuing sell off.

6:49 EDT was another decision moment: price had been below 1.4625 for a few minutes making a shallow curve in the process but was now coming back up. Was this a good breakout failure? I decided against it as there was only the one point (from 6:33 EDT) to base any sort of support level off.

I’ve mulled over if there was something I missed that could have alerted me to the swift 25 pip drop that occurred at 6:51 EDT. Even after racking my brains I’ve come up blank. I didn’t have anything in mind as I was watching it in real time. Even with hindsight and looking at the chart I can’t pick out anything that would have been a good hook that would have gotten me in early to catch that move. It would have been nice to have nabbed a few of those juicy pips so it was not to be!

I’m happy with the pips I made and another decent week of trading.

The markets are closed for Good Friday (tomorrow) and Easter Monday (next week), so I’m going to be taking a break from trading for those days too.

On the subject of religion I’ve been interested in how Don Miller has been integrating more of his Christian beliefs into his blog posts (such as this one), seemingly in line with his more active involvement with his local church. It’s also fascinating how he has touched on how Christians justify trading. Is trading something that God approves of?

While I was raised Roman Catholic I am now an atheist. I’m glad that I don’t need to concern myself with seeking justification and approval from anyone outside of my family and friends. Adding religion to the trading mix just seems to make things more complicated. Which makes me rather glad that I don’t have to deal with any of that.

I wonder how many traders are religious versus being agnostic or atheist. Is it in line with the general population or severely skewed as in the case of prominent scientists? In 1998 92% of the members of the National Academy of Sciences either had no belief in God or were agnostic. Neil deGrasse Tyson asks the great question: why are 8% of them still religious? (Video part 2.)

The main thing I will be celebrating this weekend is the deliciousness of dark chocolate bunnies.