Welcome back Meta-Traders.It was a wild week in equity and currency markets. Last week's euphoria regarding an agreement among Euro-zone countries was thrown into doubt when Greek Prime Minister Papandreou made a shocking announcement that the Greeks would hold a referendum on the bailout plan itself.
This shocking news trashed Equities and brought funds flooding back to the USD. The EUR/USD tells the story perfectly. Last Thursday's rally in EUR/USD broke the 1.40 mark decisively to the upside setting up up for further gains, right?
Wrong. News of the referendum trashed the rally and EUR/USD sold off right back to the bottom of the range and found support at the 1.36 level before closing the week at 1.3790. It was a setup for the EUR longs, the false breakout followed by a throw-back of the breakout and then some. Shows how hard it is to trade currencies manually and why I don't even bother to try.
I did make a few trades this week and we had some good action with the Forex Robots, so let's get to that.
I was feeling pretty bearish on Monday and felt that last week's rally had gone too far, too fast. So I bought 1 of the SDS Nov 19 calls in each account for about $2.15 or $215. SDS is the Proshares double-short ETF - so this is a derivative on a derivative. All I can say is - is this a great country or what?
Anyway, that trade worked out and I sold the contracts a day later for $305 or about $80 profit each, but after E*Trade's $11 commission each way, only $58. Some day, I'm going to grow up and get Interactive Brokers or Tradestation where the same trade would cost me 2 bucks.
One more thing about this trade - why just 1 contract? I seem to have a psychological block about playing the short side. For some reason, I have a hard time making money on the bear side. Perhaps its because the odds are against me in that stocks rise about 66% of the time. But stocks fall faster than they rally, and to become an all-season trader, I have to learn to embrace the bear.
We got some supportive words from the US Fed on Tuesday, and a surprise rate cut from the ECB on Thursday which helped stocks to recover. Late in the week, I noticed some constructive price action in Akamai (AKAM), so I bought 2 of the Nov 30 calls at about 0.95. We got some follow-through and the contract closed the week at 1.05. Will try to sell these next week in the 2.0 to 2.5 range.
Forex Robots had a bang-up week, with nice gains is most accounts. The star of the week was Atipaq Full Portfolio which picked up about 7% for the week and is now up 40.18% on the year.
Atinalla FE had a solid week, up about 4.5%. This system had 3 winning trades in a 2 day period which is unusual to say the least. This system traded well in the face of the steep selling in EUR this week, taking 3 consecutive winners on the short side.
Megadroid Live picked up about 1.5% on the week. Since the Margin level went to 1:50, Megadroid no longer doubles its size after a loss. This makes it a safer system to trade overall.
Most of the other accounts were a disappointment. FX-Regression took a pasting with all this directional action and lost about 6% on the week.
All of the Coatl portfolios lost, since they were setup for further upside in the Euro, which didn't turn out as expected.
On the development side, my new FXDD Account is open and funded. More to come on that.
Enjoy your weekend.
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