Meta-Trader - A Nuclear March

Welcome back Meta-Traders.

It was an extraordinary week by any nearly any definition. The vast human tragedy that has unfolded in Japan is almost incomprehensible. The earthquake itself was described as a "1000-year event" and the tsunami overwhelmed the local defenses and laid waste to miles of coastline killing thousands and causing billions in property damage.

The disaster exceeded the design specifications for the 4-reactor Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant and knocked out both local and off-site power. This lead to a dangerous overheating of the reactors and a series of explosions which left the plant spewing out radioactive material. Is this scenario - natural disaster causes nuclear accident - a 25 Sigma Event?

Equity markets hated this of course which sent stock markets plunging around the globe. Quaddfi was now merely a distraction from the massive loss of life and property in Japan. Not to mention the loss of economic output in Japan which is the world's 3rd largest economy. As if all that weren't enough, the prospect of an out-of-control nuclear reactor is enough to put anybody on edge. All this nasty business made for some good forex trading, so let's do the numbers.

The week started on the right foot when Sunday gap trader DCT pulled in about 60-pips in the first 2.5 hours of the Sunday open.

On Tuesday, USD/CAD went parabolic and raced up about 200 pips stopping just short of par. Recall I noted last week that I wanted to sell parabolic up-moves in USD/CAD. Unfortunately, I missed this move and within a few short hours, it USD/CAD was back down to the 0.98 area. So I missed the chance on that move, but here's where it gets interesting.

On Wednesday afternoon at about 5PM EST, I was just minding my own business when USD/JPY completely fell out of bed and plunged through long-term support levels at about 0.80 to a new all-time low for this pair (high for the Yen) at 0.76. I checked for news and couldn't find any and found it interesting that this type of large move would occur outside of both US and Japanese core market hours.

Call it Yen repatriation, call it unwind of the carry trade, call it hedge fund repositioning. In any case, I saw opportunity and I went long USD/JPY on the bounce back to support and picked up 82 pips in about an hours time. You can see that trade, the DCT trade and a pair of sucessful Megadroid trades reflected in my Megadroid Live account which had a pretty decent week.

On Friday the G7 countries announced a coordinated effort at central bank intervention to keep a lid on the rising Yen. This alone was an extraordinary event and we haven't seen a move like this in over 10 years. Personally, I don't think it will work and I think the USD/JPY will revisit last week's low in the coming week. I didn't back this opinion with a position though.

The systems over at Asirikuy systems had some amazing results and we will see below.

The winner in terms of live accounts was Atipaq Full Portfolio Live which pulled in an astounding 18.95% for the week which was over 1100 pips! I've reflected further on how Atipaq trades and have these key observations:

- Take profit is roughly 3 times the box size, and stop loss is the bottom (or top for short trades) of the box size, so take profits are much larger than losses

- The system can get into multiple long or short trades (one per day) on the same pair in the same direction. It holds them until as long as it takes for them to hit the TP or SL.

- In my case, the system was short 3 trades NZD/USD and 3 trades of AUD/USD trades which all ran to their take profits.

As if that weren't enough, it the system went into the weekend with over 100 pips in open profits. Thank you Daniel Fernandez!

Next up was Atinalla #1 Live which picked up just under 1% for the week but went into the weekend with about 58 pips in open profits.

Next up was Atinalla #3 Live which was down about 0.8% for the week and went out with about 47 pips in open losses.

My own EA FX-Regression Live gyrated around the zero point.

Next up is Atinalla FE Live went to a new equity low early in the week down about -6.5% but came back somewhat later in the week and went into the weekend with an open profit in a long EUR/USD position.

Finally Atinalla #4 SM Live was down fractionally for the week but went out long with about 50 pips in open profits.

One last word demo account COATL EUR Centered Portfolio had a spectacular week picking up 11.59% for the week. Even more impressive is that it went out with an astounding 2700 pips in open profits! That's an incredible performance and pretty unbelievable for a forex robot. Keep up the great work Daniel Fernandez!

That's all for now and let's keep the brave people of Japan in our thoughts ..