Here we are on the Monday right after the British Pound dove off a steep cliff. In addition, London’s time changed so that London open does not correspond with the normal London open for US traders, that goes back to normal Sunday when US times change as well. After such a massive move, we found ourselves in a bit of a range, playing ping pong between support and resistance throughout the first trading day of the week. Likely the best approach for extracting pips during this London session was going to be taking shots right off the tops and bottoms of these definable ranges using shorter term time frame clues ‘Around’ these zones, such as higher low’s or lower high’s. In this video I highlight one such trade plan that we executed in the room together involving the GBP/JPY. We identified a good deal of overlapping resistance around the 150.00 area on multiple time frames, then simply planned a low risk high reward short trade plan if and only IF we got a lower high to work with off this area, using a short term chart to zoom in. Sure enough it presented itself on a 2minute chart, a Lower High, with just 15 pips or so risk (very low risk on GBP/JPY), and a reward likely of 60-70 pips it was too hard to resist. As it were this trade dropped to around 40ish pip profit before pulling back near to entry for one final chance to get in or reload it, then fell for the remainder of the range/scalp trade right to our rising trend line. Hey take what you can get, we were ‘Scraping’ for our pips today, so a 60 pip trade was considered a Monster! =). Hopefully NY will kick it up a notch.

FXBootcamp London Currency Coach-
Christian Stephens

London started off kind of slow today and we bounced around a bit looking for strength versus weakness. Most of us were in some sort of a British Pound long from late in the pre-London session, but we were starting to see some clues of exhaustion, time to take some profit, or protect pips. Then we took notice of the GBP/JPY pair particularly starting to show short term MACD divergence pretty much exactly when it was hitting it’s Daily 200ema, previous swing high on the Daily chart, as well as the Weekly M4 reversal pivot point. While none of us wanted to pick a top, that divergence at that resistance was such a clue of a possible impending short trade plan, that any Lower High development on this short term chart was reason enough to give the short a shot with a higher high stop, 20 pips risk or so, targeting about a 40-50 pip move before we reached support again, and we also had British GDP approaching in a half hour or so. The EUR/GBP was also showing a double bottom at 90 cents, as even cable had a short term lower high. This was starting to smell of GBP sell off just before news. Just before the news came out we were 55 pips or so in profit on the GBP/JPY short, definitely protect break even at minimum as news could evaporate all of it, or even take some partial profit. Well the GDP came out negative and Whammo, British Pound ‘Everything’ plummeted 200 pips in no time at all. So what started out as a conservative lower high off resistance trade attempt, turned into a 300 pip trade by the end, or much more if you were in all the GBP pairs. Simply an amazing way to finish a fantastic week, and a reminder to all of us why you let profits run once you have break even or MAP (minimal acceptable performance 15-20 pips) locked in. You never know which trade will be the monster like this. Have a great weekend folks!

FXBootcamp London Currency Coach-
Christian Stephens

During today’s pre-London session and then into the first hour of the London open, we were dealing with some short term British Pound weakness and Japanese Yen strength, a quality setup for a GBP/JPY short, that was very easy to plan for trade entries and targets prior to pre-London beginning. In this video I show why I looked for these setups to begin with, and how both I went about initial entries prior to the London session I coach, along with some reloads we took together in the London session with the class. The last of which ended up being stopped out break even, but over all a nice Monday starting over 100 pips, nothing wrong with that.

I have not made a video in a couple weeks, I apologize for that, just been trading extended hours lately, this video shows that as I rambled on a bit. Will tighten things up in the video’s to come, see you all tomorrow.

FXBootcamp London Currency Coach-
Christian Stephens

The U.S. dollar and British pound, two currencies which have been rather sickly of late, showed a somewhat healthier glow during today’s New York session.

Curt Wehrley
FX Bootcamp’s Quantitative Analyst

While we continued to short the (insert your favorite yen pair here) during the Pre-London and into early London sessions, we found ourselves reaching an important area of support on the USD/JPY not too long after the London open. Even though everything on the Yens looked to continue to the downside, this support was very close to the big psychological level of 90.00, along with a multitude of overlapping support (Long term 78.6 fib, trendline, S2 pivot, etc.) all being struck just after a major market open. While we did not expect any kind of instant reversal, there certainly were reasons to look for clues of profit taking around this support and possibly translate that into some short term longs on GBP/JPY. At least until we could find dynamic resistance to re short the thing. So in this video, I highlight how we took profit on our original short pre-London, longed off support using a higher low for entry, took profit around 50 pips and re shorted for 50 pips, only to long a 15m Higher Low again, and shoot for more pips to the upside. It was a difficult session to hold onto anything but if you were nimble the pips were there for the taking.

FXBootcamp London Currency Coach-
Christian Stephens

Stellar day for the British Pound Sterling. We started off pre-London a bit slow, but gave no reason to doubt continuation of our GBP strength started yesterday during the London session, as the EUR/GBP was tipping it’s hand early letting us know it’s intentions for the Pound tonight.. While there were numerous GBP long related entries speckled through out the European/London sessions, in this video I focus on one of the latter entries, a News scalp. In this video I show why we felt bullish still on the GBP to begin with, how we built our trade plan, where we planned to stop our loss and take our profit. After which we simply awaited the news release, and plotted our Fibonacci pullback entry zone after initial direction was known. What we ended up with for a news scalp was about as good as it gets, a 45′ish pip trade bouncing right off our target for a full hit, for only a 10-12 pip risk. We had larger spot traders today, but I really wanted to share this news scalp with you, as I believe this type of trade is where many have a hard time dealing with. Today was a wonderful British Pound Sterling buffet, I do hope you got your fill as well!

Have a fantastic holiday weekend!

FXBootcamp London Currency Coach-
Christian Stephens

Today the EUR/GBP and GBP/CHF 2hr macd divergence we have seen for over a week finally was followed up by some lower highs on the EUR/GBP and higher lows on GBP/CHF. Hinting Strongly at minimum of a 21 ema pullback on these long term charts was about to occur. This meant essentially we had technical reasoning to go Long British Pound Sterling against all comers all night long at any support possible until either resistance was hit, or failure in the form of 1-2-3 pattern’s etc. There were high quality long entries on GBP/USD, GBP/CHF, GBP/JPY, and short on EUR/GBP well into the pre-London session. These parts all offered again high quality pullbacks as the London market opened around 8am London time. In this video I focus on just one of these pairings, the GBP/JPY. I show in detail the divergence we spoke of that led us to believe Sterling strength all night would be the theme, along with complete details on how we put together a ‘Reload’ of the GBP/JPY long off a double bottom 61/8% Fibonacci and other overlapping support. I also discuss how we planned our profit takes, and determine where this trade might go. Excellent night overall, nice GBP basket trades that really cleaned up tonight, could not ask for a better way to end the week.

FXBootcamp London Currency Coach-
Christian Stephens

[Click on the graph above for a larger version]

One of your most important indicators for trading the Forex market is the clock. Knowing how to trade — using technical and fundamental analysis, managing risk, adopting a trader’s mindset — is critical, but your effectiveness as a trader is limited until you know when to trade. The above graph [click on the graph to view a larger version] is a visual answer to the question, “When does the GBP/JPY tend to move?”

The small black squares on the graph represent the average range (high minus low) for the 15-minute candle which opens at the time of day designated by the scale at the bottom of the graph. The gray bars, which stretch above and below the black squares, represent what statisticians refer to as the 95% confidence interval for the true mean of the range for candles at that time of day. For an example of how to interpret those gray bars, look to the one labeled “U.S. equity market open 9:30am ET.” The average range of the 15-minute candle which opens at 13:30 GMT, based on GBP/JPY price data from June 15 through August 14, has been about 43 pips. Recent data suggests the range of that candle has been statistically different from the average range (32 pips) of the previous 15-minute candle, but not statistically different from the average range (42 pips) of the next 15-minute candle. In simpler terms, the GBP/JPY has recently seen a significant surge in volatility during the 15 minutes after the U.S. equity market open at 13:30 GMT, as compared to the volatility during the prior 15 minutes.

This graph does not in any way predict the direction that the GBP/JPY moves at given time. It only shows how big the 15-minute candles have tended to be at different times in the day.

Times shown at the bottom of the graph are GMT. To convert GMT to your local time, go here.

Curt Wehrley
FX Bootcamp’s Quantitative Analyst

As the pre-London session ended today, and we ere taking profit on our GBP/USD and GBP/JPY shorts at support, our attention quickly turned to the London Open. Here we are yet again, at support on these two pairs Right as the London market opens. I prefer to not counter trend, but when you find yourself at support across the board at a major market open, it’s hard not to look for clues of buying off this support, I mean who wants to short at support right? In this video I zoom into the GBP/USD and cover as clear as I can the how’s and why’s of this counter trend Long trade plan. It became a simple matter of awaiting a higher high, then locking in break even, done deal, no risk trade then. After that we moved on about our business on other trade idea’s while the pair slowly inched it’s way to our target over the next few hours. Eventually we nailed our target for a 60′ish pip counter trend trade, and even found reasons to short at the beginning of London lunch. No real major news releases tonight led to a very predictable onslaught of ‘Technical’ trading, the money truly was made in the waiting tonight, on this trade shown as well as several others.

FXBootcamp London Currency Coach-
Christian Stephens

We were kind of direction less for the most part on the majors as we neared the London open today. However, just prior to London opening we had the beginning of a British Pound selloff against all comers. The initial break of the price trap did not offer the high quality pullback we were looking for, so it was fairly easy to miss this nice move, unless you were very aggressive and sold simply at the hesitation. So then we watched as the GBP pairings hit support on longer term charts, such as the EUR/GBP hitting both a daily and weekly R2 reversal pivot point at the same time. We then planned our full move Fibonacci pullback entry for a continuation attempt. While we did indeed get our entries, as you will see in the video, things do not always work as planned in Forex. Not every trade rains pips on us, in fact it was easy to take a small loss on this setup. I still wish to make this video however, so that a) viewers understand not every trade is a winner, and b) if you have a solid plan, and stick to the basics within that plan (such as selling only off resistance or buying only off support), that you can mitigate the trades that do not work as well. In other words even on a no win trade you will often end up + a few pips or break even, instead of some silly big loss. Ultimately the GBP/CHF and GBP/JPY were the only two that really coughed up any pips on our entry, but if one only took GBP/USD, it was a very boring 2 hours of waiting and no rainbow at the end.

Still a profitable night, certainly a downer overall though, but a great week nonetheless. See everyone next week!

FXBootcamp London Currency Coach-
Christian Stephens