The last major source of event risk prior to Friday’s non-farm payrolls report is the U.S. ISM manufacturing index, released during tomorrow’s New York session. But don’t overlook the U.K. Manufacturing PMI news release more than five hours prior, as that report could kick-start a move on the pound if it delivers a surprise number.

The stock markets in Japan, Germany, England and the United States were up. We started our trading planning with the idea to short the JPY. I used an Andrew’s Pitch Fork on the EUR/GBP to choose our pair. Watch the video to see how made 100+ pips on the GBP/JPY.

Several news events are sprinkled on the agenda for the last day of April, but the Federal Open Market Committee’s decision on the Federal Funds rate and accompanying statement will likely dominate the market’s mindset.

Buying yen all night and all morning. This video is an example of how to set up short trades on the GBP/JPY based on pull backs. It also shows how to align multiple time frames so that they all agree.

With such an anticipated news week ahead of today, it was not all that surprising that we were semi-quiet just before London. This did provide us more than a few price trap scenario’s to plot out before things got going, for some nice support/resistance trading. In this video I show just a couple of the trade plans we took advantage of. EUR/USD was in a 50 pip or so apex of a 2h triangle, and using USD correlation at the time gave a clear break of this support drawn on a 15m time frame right as London boys were coming on board. Whether one took the short on the break or on the quick Fibonacci retracement, either one proved a nice entry with very low risk around 1.5630-35. The targets were 1.5586 (previous S&R), 1.5548 (Psych level of 50 & todays S2 reversal pivot point), and 1.5471 (the 2hr triangle prediction). All of which provided fantastic risk vs. reward ratio (risking around 20 pips). With S2 being hit so far outside the hourly bollinger bands, it made perfect sense to take profits there, especially with some stochastic divergence building up just before it hit. This was a fairly painless 80-90 pips depending on entry, and far more if you were trading other USD pairs in a correlated fashion. Also the AUD/USD provided a very similar entry setup, correlated nicely with the Gold commodity break it’s own rising trendline on the 1 hr. All of this shown in detail on this video, check it out. Fairly nice support/resistance day for several hundred pips.

FXBootcamp London Currency CoachCoach- Christian Stephens

GBP/JPY offered two scalp setups at the beginning of the session… in fact, we made 75 pips before the stock market even openned. We finished off the session with a small spot trade on the same pair.

Daily Ranges **

** - Based on DealBook 360 price data through Friday, April 25, 2008

Weekly Pivot Points*

Apr 28 - May 2, 2008

* - based on GFT DealBook 360 price data

Today the USD was on a bit of an early warpath against most currencies just before London opened, continuing to some predictable profit taking points. This was true with the exception of the British Pound which woke up and crushed the USD. While we had a ton of successful trade plans during this London session we focus in this video on the EUR/USD. Using 15m MACD and stochastic divergence as an early directional clue, the EUR/USD finally bounced off the last 15m swing’s 50% fib and broke it’s 21 ema along with a very easy to see trend line from yesterdays low. Once this break occurred there were at least 4 Fibonacci retracements offering entry before the big plunge to our 138% fib extension at 1.5685. Three quite conservative repeatable entries were available over a couple hour span before it finally snapped the support around the 4 hour 200ema. After which the target was just a matter of time. Not very often do you get 3 or 4 chances to enter at retracements levels like this, pretty sweet trade here for 75-100 pips depending on which one you took. Overall was a very nice multiple hundred pip day playing around with the USD. Have a great weekend!

FXBootcamp London Currency Coach- Christian Stephens

The end of this trading week brings the first estimate of first quarter U.K. GDP, due for release during the European session. A downside surprise would likely match a three-year low for quarter-to-quarter growth in the United Kingdom.