I flipped when I should've flopped.

[cowmadagan]

Sure Eric.

First, I think I was long EUR/JPY because I figured that was low enough to be able to see a bounce back within the next few days, as the JPY was a punching bag all week, even against the drowning EUR.

My rationale was actually thinking in what I call 'binary thinking' which is 'hey, that's more expensive than it has been in a while, so I should sell' or 'hey, that's much cheaper than it has been in a while, so I should buy.'
Binary thinking is asking to lose money. (See EUR/GBP recently)

Obama comes along, and made it possible to come out profitable with only a slightly worse unrealized p/l than before the ordeal.

 

[Eric Alyea]

21st JPY what happened

Ok that’s what a lot of investors would get from the ....whatever....
This is one of the few times I would analyze a bad “shot”. Such a “4X Drama” dramatic drop, in hind sight, what do you think happened.
1/21/10 USD/JPY from 91.7 down to 90.13????
Look at that chart. Technical vs. Analytical your opinion?

 

[cowmadagan]

I think it was fundamentals. Japan has been worried about where to put their money for a while, and that jobs report I think gave many people a wake up call that all the roses the politicians were waving under the press and public's noses were to hide the smell of the reality.
There's been so much drain on the Euro, and I think that's all because the public of Europe, the US, and Japan all think that the US is going to roar along while everyone else has flooded their engines.
I'm biased though because economies are human sciences, not like physics, so I blame almost everything that happens on psychology. I think it's usually fear and opportunism, technical indicators like Fibb becoming self-fulfilling prophecies because of the number of people who trade off of them, or actual people creating resistance or support because that's the target value of the pair for whatever it is. The only parts that I don't think are psychological are the interconnected ripples of one currency being directly bought or sold en mass (which I described in the geometry post), and the stuff that RSI or CCI show (which is that the number of buyers or sellers is running out, so there's really no chance for the price to stay).

 

[Music Man]

Well, this time I did the reverse belly-flop, first on USD/JPY and then on AUD/USD. The slow, grinding up-trend is a pattern that seems to catch me off guard sometimes.

I think it's because of the slowness factor. Price action of such low volumes is not typical of rallies. It's too controlled, orderly... like someone was standing over a room of traders calling cadence. The price just marches up, slowly but surely.

I ended up cutting my losses on USD/JPY. The Aussie is finally coming back my way, but I've really got to find a quicker way to recognize these slow-rise uptrends.

MM

 

[cowmadagan]

I just can't get a break while I sleep.
I think one habit I'm doing recently, and hopefully by noticing this it'll stop, is wishful-protective thinking. What I mean by that is that I'm putting my stop behind the first resistance/support level in the other direction, but I really should be putting it in the second one. Just like a jet on an aircraft carrier, when you get a random spike it'll slow down before blowing through multiple stopping measures.