I turned 25 over the weekend, with upcoming travels in mind it was a fairly low key event. Working in the evening and a couple of drinks after work. Saving those pennies before I go away in two months! That has certainly come around quickly.

I'm working quite a bit at the moment so I didn't get a chance to blog over the weekend. Last week was slow enough. I entered an EU long on Thursday which I held over night and into Friday. For the most part it was down before a push up around lunch time Friday.

The initial entry was down to another one of those instances where the hourly bar made a new low and a new high. I'll explain more below.

This was how the charts looked when I placed the order;

EUR/USD 1hr PnF 

EUR/USD 15min & 1hr HLC

As you can see on the 1hr chart on the right, at the right edge we have that hourly bar which made a new low and this corresponds to the last column on the PnF chart. All was looking well for an entry at this point and I set my order. For a triple top break above the previous two X columns with an entry at 1.3080. Unfortunately it made this new low and then pushed up quickly before the end of the hour and this changed the look of the chart.

The PnF chart changed to the following;

EUR/USD 1hr PnF (ii)

And this is why;

EUR/USD 15min & 1hr HLC (ii)

This is just how the PnF charts are drawn, even though this is the second or third time i've spoken about it, it tends to be a rare occurrence. Just one of those things i've to be aware of. 

Anywho, all that aside, I stuck with the long position as I still felt it was strong. It idled along and I eventually closed it manually for a small profit around lunch time on Friday after a big upthrust with high volume at the top of a zone. The next bar actually pushed up but it wouldn't have hit the target anyway.

EUR/USD 1hr HLC

That's it, i'll try get this weeks update up a bit quicker. I've already had one successful trade this week with a short on EU. The first time i've taken a trade on a Monday in a long time!

Cheers,

Liam

I'm very pleased with how this week went. More to the point, i'm pleased with how I reacted to last week and the mistakes I made. This week had two trades, both profitable. 1 long on GBP/USD and a short on USD/CHF. I set both orders at the same time as the situations developed on each chart.

Both of the trades were triggered on Tuesday. The GBP/USD trade hit the target that I had set for it on Wednesday and the Swissy trade was a manual close around 3 or 4pm on Friday.

GBP/USD chart first. A triple top buy, simple enough set up in keeping with the current trend. As i'd done all my Swissy analysis first I was also confident that with Swissy going down there was a good probability that Cable would push up seeing as they're inverse.

GBP/USD 1hr PnF

Funnily enough I thought the Swissy set up was a really strong one but it idled along for most of the week doing it's best to break through a really high volume zone that it was resting on top of.

USD/CHF 1hr PnF

USD/CHF 1hr HLC(i)

Zoomed out chart showing where the highest volume zone comes from at the end of January.

USD/CHF 1hr HLC(ii)

Latest high volume zone. The resistance at the 50% of this zone coincides with the resistance at the low of the high volume zone on the PnF chart.

I closed the position for about 18 pips before the final drive down late on Friday evening.

Two positive trades for the week, happy!

Cheers,

Liam

Today was a comedy of errors, so much so that i've just brushed it off as one of those days! I've not been posting mid week as of late but I wanted to get this out there and on virtual paper while my mind whirs away.

As far as i'm concerned the week so far has been pretty much untradeable in PnF terms. 100pips up, 90 down, 90 up, 90 down and so on and so forth. No discernible signals in either direction. I'm talking about EU by the way, in case that wasn't clear.

I'll talk through the charts below to outline what happened today.

EUR/USD 1hr PnF

EUR/USD 1hr HLC

A. This was the first thing I spotted this morning. The potential for EU to push down further (it had already dropped a lot in the morning) and print a staggered triple bottom signal. I set the order but this didn't materialise before it started pushing up again on the next column (labelled C)

B. This is where things get a little bit complicated. It even took me a while to get my head around it whilst looking at the charts. Due to the nature of PnF charts, we can only fill boxes in one direction at any one time. On the HLC chart above you can see the high volume bar that i've marked. This bar is problematic in that it makes a new high which continues the up column (C) but it also completes the reversal amount of 30 pips and makes a new low and lower. The PnF chart has already registered the new high so it can't print the down column. Whilst this bar pushes down, it completes a triple bottom sell - which is where I entered short. It isn't until the next hourly bar ticks over and we have a new low printed that this will complete on the charts. So the bar after the high volume bar ticks over and then we get the reversal printed.*

C. But there's no triple bottom sell on the PnF chart above I hear you say. You'd be correct in that observation. Unfortunately, the bar after the high volume bar goes back up and makes a new high. As far as the PnF charts are concerned, we never actually made that low and the up column at C continues as before. This is a pretty rare occurrence on the charts but it's pretty annoying when it does happen. Unfortunately that's the downside to PnF. Needless to say, I got stopped on that.

I shouldn't have got stopped though and this is where error one comes in. On the HLC chart above, look at the size of that volume on the down bar as well as the close off the lows! This was screaming that some buying came in. My VSA mentors would be ashamed! I was chatting with my Dad on Gmail at the time and even said to him that I should close out. But I didn't. I'm not entirely sure why but I think an element of hope crept in. I need to nip that in the bud straight away.

At the same time as taking this EU trade, I entered long on Swissy.

A similar thing happened on this chart but due to a mistake that turned out to be a blessing in disguise I was stopped for the size of the spread on that trade. So only minor damage on that one whereas it would have been a full stop. I ticked a box and forgot to untick it and it set my stop at the size of the spread, so I was stopped about 45seconds after entering that trade. Duh.

I'll probably take tomorrow off with NFP on the horizon. I've been working on some testing so i'll continue with that.

*I have no idea if this makes sense to anyone but myself. 

March finished as a slight down month and leaves me down 0.15% since the start of the year. A negligible amount. At one stage it was looking worse but I had a nice few trades towards the end of March to bring me back up.

I've taken 25 trades so far so that's averaging just under two trades a week this is a nice amount but I feel this could be increased to three a week factoring missed opportunities. But i'm not going to think about that too much and keep going as I am.

As always, i'll look to further build on this recent run of results.

This update was a little slow coming as I was busy towards the end of last week. I went up to see Biffy Clyro in Dublin on Thursday night. It was something like my 16th time seeing them over the course of about 10 years. I skipped the last tour but was really impressed with this one. Really enjoyed what was quite a varied set list considering they have six albums to choose from. They've come along way from playing in front of 20 people to pretty much selling out arena tours.

Whilst we were up in Dublin we took the time to get our vaccinations for out trip to South East Asia. My arms a still a little sore and that was last Thursday! I then spent a couple of days visiting my parents in Italy for Easter. A much needed break and a small respite from the cold in Ireland. Just a shame that it wasn't for a few days more. I'm back in work now and it's bloody freezing!

Moving on to last week, I took a short on GU on Tuesday which I held over night and closed on Wednesday for around 30pips.

GBP/USD 1hr PnF

I entered at 1.5150 as a staggered triple bottom signal was formed. My initial stop was at A at -60 pips. After a reversal I moved my stop to just above B. In keeping with my last couple of posts I was just aiming for 1:1. Unfortunately it didn't quite hit +60. Getting to around +50 at the low of C. I closed it as it retraced back up this column. It only really occurred to me now but once I had moved my stop to above B, should I then have settled with the equivalent target for 1:1? This would have been around 40pips. Something for me to look in to anyway. As it turned out, i'm glad I closed for 30pips as it would've meant a loss of 40 had I stuck to my original rules.

I'll post weekly / monthly updated charts in the next blog entry.

Cheers,

Liam