THERE ARE NO TRADING ISLANDS ANY LONGER

“Your only hope of winning? Surrender to the market!” 

That whole thing last night with the ECB hinting at “future” rate hikes, in order to set off buy stops in the EURUSD & the EUR crosses at the thinnest, most illiquid time of day, is just another example of the total coordinated BS manipulation among and across central banks the world over to determine preferred outcomes. And who do you think filled those buy stops last night with selling; pajama traders in Tokyo or Europe?

No, of course not; round up the usual TBTF felon bank suspects like JPM, Vampire Squid, HSBC, Deutsche Bank, & Barclays and you won’t be far from the truth; fast forward a few short hours, and the same folks who couldn’t wait to buy EURAUD in the 1.4030’s & 40’s cuz Super Mario is hinting [yea, sure] rates could be on the rise in the Eurozone some day [mm, like 2025?], are now lining up at the “sell window” to puke sub 1.3990 with a 60+ PIP blast lower in minutes. And the “reason”, according to the “talking heads” is that Marine LePen is up 1% in the polls for the French election round 1; never mind she is still predicted to lose round 2, which is the one that counts, but somehow you’re supposed to swallow this BS. “Thanks, come again”!

And once you realize what is at work here, you come to the conclusion nothing is really moving anywhere … and all that is happening is that all of our favorite insider banks are selling both institutional & retail the highs, and waiting for Pie Holes to speak up so they can line up and absorb the selling on the lows; rinse & repeat, and not bad criminal work if you can get it. Throw a little of the green stuff around to the Pols for the effort, and everybody is happy [well almost]; and if you get caught and have to pay some nuisance regulator who just won’t take “no” for an answer, you pony up a few hundred million [paper clip money to be sure] and start the process all over again after allowing some junior desk trader up for sacrifice to fall on the sword. “God this is easy … oh, and profitable”!

Usually, this kind of action has been contained to the precious metals, where Sunday night manipulation, or right before the Tokyo open in Asia when conditions are “thin” to say the least, has led to some eye watering waterfalls that take sell stops on a ride nobody wants. But then starting in January 2015 we had the EURCHF debacle, and then on October 6, 2016 we had the GBPUSD debacle; anybody starting to see a pattern here besides me? And while they can’t all be the magnitude of the CHF & GBP, make no mistake this is what we have to deal with today on a consistent basis.

And this is why I say, you have to be on this stuff [meaning specifically, gold, USDJPY, EURAUD, GBPAUD, & GBPNZD] like “white on rice”; you don’t have the luxury of sitting on losers or hanging around a market that is doing nothing while you are in a position. All of these markets are like nuclear weapons; harmless when they’re sitting there and not doing anything, but when they go off you are less than a cinder block before you know what hit you. Some markets, like gold right now, are in my opinion simply too risky for what your potential reward is; it’s at least 10X higher risk/reward than anything on the board. That doesn’t mean, though, that just because we are in Yen or EURAUD, or maybe even the 2 GBP cousins GBPAUD & GBPNZD that we can be sloppy, or let losses ride, or walk away from the market to walk the dog. If you do that, it’s only a matter of time before some government Pie Hole shows up and says something detrimental to your position … the dog can wait.

Like so many other days before this one, everything is quiet and then all of a sudden at 7 A.M. sharp New York time, all hell breaks loose for 50 minutes [thank you French pollsters], and then … crickets. EURAUD drops 60 PIPS, and now here we are unable to get an M1 with a range higher than 2 PIPS either way; welcome to “speed of light trading … meh … you know the rest”.

During this 50 minute blitz, I did manage to sell on a signal … market went a few PIPS for us … trade directly below … but after hitting the low for the next M1 came back to put in a reversal, which got me to liquidate … if I had to make this trade 10 times, I’d do it the same every time … it’s the only way you can trade these and you must simply TAKE WHAT THE MARKET GIVES YOU via the signals … and today wasn’t a particularly good day for signal generation; in hindsight, the very best technical indicator around, but when they don’t come like you want, you just have to wait … “yes, I know waiting is hard, but markets are known for frustrating many … trading is simple … that doesn’t mean it’s easy, and if everybody could do it, every family in America with a deadbeat cousin [and everybody has these] would already be doin’ it”!

 

Early on, everything we got was “iffy” … meaning, trade signals weren’t that strong and were very much subject to interpretation … we didn’t get any clear bearish engulfing patterns, shooting stars, or reversals that I can point to on the candlestick and say in real time, “well yea, here is a clear sell signal”. This is the price we pay for statistical significance; I don’t want just any code, I want only the ones that show up and mean something.

Here slightly in the P.M. in New York, we’re headed into a Friday afternoon where the markets appear drifting, without much impetus to want to go anywhere, meaning it will turn into a dealer stop hunt with spikes up/down that go nowhere. After this week, most traders are licking wounds … a completely dead Monday, Tuesday that netted nobody anything… the FED, elections in “Retardistan”, ECB rumors, & French polls the rest of the week to roil up/down anything and everything with “speed of light” moves … and if you’re on the wrong side of this stuff? … well, nobody knows where it ends, cuz crosses can go literally anywhere; saying it can’t get much worse only means it’s likely to get “worser-er”.

USDJPY for its part decided to awaken today; we’ll see if this continues into next week. For the better part of 3 weeks, this market has been awful. Gold deciding not to show up today and “mail in” a performance that can only be described as “nobody cares”.

Now that this week is over, hopefully trading can return to some kind of a normal trade flow; nobody wants to do more volume with bigger trade sizes than me, but since the introduction of the version 3 volatility algorithm trading conditions have been lousy. First gold turned, and then the Yen died, and while we’ve only been in EURAUD for a few days, conditions in this market as well as GBPAUD are pretty much SOP [standard operating procedure] and trading normally, which is encouraging. I would like to see better trade flow [meaning, the M1’s are larger in scope], but with this week over I think that will happen starting next week.

Over the weekend, and on Sunday night, I’ll be posting another “Special Update” on EURAUD, GBPAUD, & GBPNZD, with some insight and analysis that I hope you will find helpful. I’m going to try and get some of the manuals & tutorials updated as well, so I got a full plate this weekend.

PAMM spreadsheet results for today directly below.

 

First some beach … I’m so outta here … until Sunday night!

Have a great weekend everybody!

-vegas

OUR ‘TURNKEY FOREX’  PAMM/MAM  IS NOW OPEN AND OPERATIONAL; SEE “PAMM/MAM MANAGED MONEY PROGRAM” IN “DOWNLOAD LINKS” SECTION IN RIGHT HAND COLUMN FOR DETAILS [VIEW ONLINE AND/OR DOWNLOAD] AND START YOUR JOURNEY FROM WHERE YOU ARE AT TO “ESCAPE TO SUCCESS”!