Monday, May 31, 2010

Basic guidelines for the LAST WAVE TECHNIQUE

Basic guidelines for this technique are:
  • Signals will be sent between 2:10pm EST (20.10 GMT+1) and 2:20pm EST (20.20 GMT+1) and they will be valid starting at 2:20pm EST (20.20 GMT+1).
  • If an order for a stock would be fulfilled before 2:20pm EST (20.20 GMT+1), that order will be cancelled.
  • We officially only trade the first two stocks whose orders are fulfilled.  Other orders will be cancelled.
  • We normally allow the trade to either reach the target or stop.  In some cases, we will send out an email 5 minutes before the market closes indicating to close the trade so as to not leave it open for the next day.  If no email is sent, the trade will remain open the following day. 
  • We always set a 4% target and a 3% stop. 

Sunday, May 30, 2010

Weekly review 05/30/2010

Good day. 

We are going to start our weekly review with Forex trading.

FOREX

FX operations from this past week:
European Morning
US Morning
-42
-69
50
-65
40
-77
50
77
-59
-59
-49
73
-52
100
5

-57
-20

As you know, this past week was flat or slightly negative which, when coupled with the previous weeks, leaves us with a flat/negative month.  In today’s review, we will dissect a little each technique and pair to analyze this flat result we have been talking about.  We will also summarize the Drawdowns we’ve experienced in all of 2010.

We’ll start with our “star” pair that, after its last month with average results (December 2009 +689 Pips), still hasn’t gotten going. 

Gbp/Usd for European Morning Technique:
Over the last several days, subscribers new to our service this year have been asking us about our maximum DrawDowns to date. For the pair we are now reviewing, its maximum DD in the last two years was between 350/400 Pips. As you can see in the chart above, we experienced this DD in the middle of the year, then recovered to approximately +150 Pips and now have fallen again to the low of the previous DD which is approximately at our all time low.

Does this mean the Gbp/Usd European Morning Technique no longer works?

No, it doesn’t as you will see in the following analysis.  FOREX has never been as volatile as it has been over these last months.  The SPOT market we’ve known over the last decades had never seen rises and falls of 400 Pips in the same day.  Therefore, one must keep in mind that a 200 Pip DrawDown in 2008 is not the same as a 200 pip DD in the current markets. 

We are going to be very attentive next week.  In the chart, one can see how our results have been flat: we haven’t broken up (+150) nor down (-250/-300). The statistics and historical data are in line and the techniques and studies indicate we should continue forward.  Making hastened decisions is what the market uses to make us lose and, extrapolating the analysis of our result, one could say we have a strong support.  As you know, when one has support, one must buy and never sell until the break is confirmed.

Now let’s review the EUR/JPY for the European Morning Technique:
As you can see, the results are good except for a couple operations of approximately 75/100 pips.   The majority of the trades are gains which add up little by little with low risk.  The average operation has a stop of 40/50 Pips. This year, we made it to +500 Pips for this pair for the European Morning Technique.  Now, we are at about +350 with a maximum Drawdown of 200 Pips which is an average Drawdown and in-line with our historical results.

GBP/USD USA Morning Technique:
There have been problems again with the Pound, as you can see in this chart. We have executed very few operations and have an average Drawdown of 200/250 Pips but without having obtained any notable positive performance. As you likely have noted, recently we almost never operate this technique because, at this time, there are so many stops and false breaks that it doesn’t make sense to operate this pair in the US session.

Eur/Jpy USA Morning Techniqe
In this chart you can see clearly the flat results we have been experiencing. Look at this series: +100, -100, +100, -100, +200, -200, +300... Again, these Drawdowns are within our historical average yet our gains have been very hard to maintain.  As of today, we have a gain of +250 Pips so far for the year.

Now let’s review pairs we use only occasionally, depending on market conditions (macroeconomic data, excessive volatility, etc.) such as the CAD/JPY and discretional signals that, unfortunately, we haven’t sent in a while due to unfavorable market conditions.
 In the case of these operations, we have had a good progression.  Our Drawdowns have been approximately 150 Pips and we have had gains of up to +300 Pips. There have been very few trades, approximately 20, as you can see. Many of these trades are based on divergences and other parameters which we wish would occur more frequently as their success rate has been high but, this year, the conditions have not been favorable. 

And, to close, here is a chart containing all our operations for all pairs we have executed so far this year.
 We made it to approximately +1.000 Pips even though you can’t see it in the chart as we are having difficulties with our database and the chart does not take into account one week of trading. You can see that, right now, we have a gain of approximately +250 Pips in an outcome zone similar to the first months of the year and without having entered losing terrain.  We are not obtaining the gains we expected but we are also not experiencing losses that would put us in danger.  We simply must be vigilant in the coming sessions to see what we can do in this exception market we are experiencing. 

FX 2010 Summary
EUR

US



EU/US
GBP/USD
EUR/JPY
GBP/USD
EUR/JPY
CAD/JPY
OTHERS
DISCRETIONAL
-248
353
-207
264
36
60
90


FUTURES & STOCKS

Now let’s review futures and stocks.  First of all, keep in mind that Monday is a holiday in the US (Memorial Day) and, therefore, we won’t operate Sp futures until Tuesday.  Our panorama has been very difficult but, before reviewing it in detail, we want you know that starting on Tuesday at 14:10 EST (19:10 GMT) we will begin to execute a new stock technique.  Actually, the technique is not new for us as we have been executing it since 2005 in our Spanish web but we have not executed it for the last several months due to low performance.  Finally, this technique is working well again as we will show you now.  The technique is called the Last Wave.  This technique has been registering good numbers in tests for the last several weeks so, starting Tuesday, we will start trading it officially. Here are the numbers Last Wave registered last week:

Aone +4.74
Sgy +4
Ire +15.42%
Jns +4.21%
Usu +4%
Csr +1.23%
Ttmi +1.41%

Total gain of +35.01% for 7 trades.

We hope the Last Wave performs as expected next week unlike the Ibex which worked well in our study trials but, since we started executing real trades, the sessions have been flat and strange things have happened to impede its success.  We hope this doesn’t happen to the Last Wave, a technique which worked very well since 2005 and now has started to work well again.

With regard to the Ibex technique, our team has been actually trading this technique for two months now and, in April, we gained approximately 600 points per contract.  In May, prior to publish our signals to subscribers, we had close to 1000 points.  But, once we started sending signals to subscribers strange things started happening, like yesterday when the Ibex has a completely stagnant session with its most narrow range in the last months, 120 points, when the normal range per session is 250 points.
 The only interesting day was last Monday when the mini just hit the stop and the large or Cfds would give 150 points for the Ibex. We’ll see what surprise we have in store for us next week.
 With regard to the Sp, as always, a picture is worth a thousand words.  We want to show you the last 15 minutes of Friday’s session with a one minute chart.  Take a look at the following:
  • 21.45, 1098
  • 21.49, 1090.5
  • In 4 minutes, 7.5 points down.
  • The show continues
  • 21.54, 1096.5
  • In 5 minutes, a rebound of 6 points
  • 22.01, 1084
  • In 6 minutes, 12 points down.

To summarize:  In 4 minutes, 7.5 points of movement; in 5 minutes, 6 points of movement; and in another 6 minutes, 12 points of movement.
 It was crazy.  Here are the numbers applying the normal technique or the inverse of the technique. As you can see, we are being as cautious as possible when we execute trades because the numbers are not good and the reason for this is the market, as you can see in the previous chart. 

DAY       
TECHNIQUE
OUTCOME Normal
OUTCOME Inverse

Monday
Morning
0
0

Opening
0
0

Evening
0.5
-4
Tuesday
Morning
-4
4

Opening
0
0

Evening
4
-4
Wednesday
Morning
-4
4

Opening
0
0

Evening
2
-4
Thursday
Morning
4
-4

Opening
-4
-4

Evening
-4
2
Friday
Morning
4
-4

Opening
0
0

Evening
-4
2


-5.5
-12
Applying our normal signals, we would have a loss of -5.5 points and, applying the inverse signals, we would have a loss of -12 points.  Interesting, isn’t it?  Well, it is easy to explain.  Strong price movements without any tendency and with wide ranges that make trading with 4 point stops enviable – Friday evening the market moved 5 points several times in less than 10 minutes and without any trending in the majority of cases – one can be kicked out of the market almost immediately.  Therefore, we must be patient with the Sp while the numbers aren’t stable. 

Next Tuesday, we start a new month, June, which traditionally has been one of the worst months of the year, along with September.

Monday, May 24, 2010

Weekly review 05/23/2010

Good day. 

We are going to start our weekly review with Forex trading.

FOREX

FX operations from this past week

As you can see, this week we had a negative outcome.  We have had a streak of bad results after having a positive streak the previous week.  Unfortunately, our recent success ratio, although positive, is somewhat low and we haven’t recently been able to string together two or three good streaks which would give us the results we are accustomed to.

Now we will provide you with the details of our operations this past week for European FX y USA FX.

EU
US
20
-81
-40
-90
-47
-90
10
-36
-81
44
-84
90
-52

-274
-163

The biggest disappointment for this month continues to be the European Technique.  Here are the numbers for the previous week. 

EU
US
100
147
-47
64
-73
-46
-70
-60
55
-68
50
91
-39
51
-40
84
50

84

70
263

Remember we had some bad luck last week as two operations for the U.S. Technique (as well as many others this month and year) missed the target by two pips (+104 Pips).

For now, we will continue as we have.  The volatility we wished for has arrived but it has been totally chaotic, causing prices to move 200 to 400 pips from one session to the next, even though from the opening of London exchange to the N.Y. exchange the price may be the same. 

As a curiosity, take a look at the following chart which demonstrates activity we have seen very infrequently.  It shows a 400 Pip fall that is completely recovered from only hours before the N.Y. close (400 Pips!!!) and even goes positive.
We continue to study the market while waiting to come out of this "Stand by" period, as we have not broken any Drawdown or negative historic parameter and we hope our strings of positive results come soon.

FUTURES

With regards to our Ibex trading, this past week was quite complicated and, as you can see in the chart below, the reason was that we had a week of wide ranges but very lateral and with continuous directional changes.

With regard to our Sp trading this past week, we only executed two operations for 0.75 points.  We did not operate because we didn’t see clear opportunities: volumes in positions were low and volatility was very, very high.
The week had a strong, downward trend, lowering the Sp from Thursday of the previous week no less than 125 points before the expiration of options on Friday.  The movements of this trend were brutal, as we have never seen before.  Look below at the example of Friday’s session with 15 minute bars.  There are price movements of up to 17 points in 15 minutes.  For our techniques, which go with 4 point stops, this drives us completely nuts.  It is like flipping a coin because, in addition, volumes were extremely low all week, just like the previous one.
Now we will review our numbers from the week.  You can see the results applying the normal technique or the inverse of the technique.

DAY       
TECHNIQUE
OUTCOME Normal
OUTCOME Inverse

Monday
Morning
0
0

Opening
5
-4

Evening
-4
2
Tuesday
Morning
-4
4

Opening
-4
5

Evening
-4
2
Wednesday
Morning
-4
4

Opening
-4
-4

Evening
0.25
2
Thursday
Morning
0
0

Opening
5
-4

Evening
0
0
Friday
Morning
-4
4

Opening
-4
5

Evening
-4
2


-25.75
18

Take a look.  If we apply our normal trading technique, we incur a loss of 25.75 points.  On the other hand, if we apply the inverse of the technique, we would have an 18 points gain.  The reasons are clear.  Just look at Friday’s opening.  Minimums were reached just after the opening and then the market turned after 30 minutes.

And, as you can see, the same thing happened in the evening.  In addition, because positions are so empty and volatility is so high, 4 points is nothing.