THE KILLING FIELDS

                                       I know How You Feel Kid

It was a perfect setup and I was ready for it; click the sell order on the algorithm sell signal, only a few pips [about 13] off the high, and then place my stop about 18 pips away – perfect! Only …

“Sorry, your trade functions have been disabled. Please contact customer service for assistance.”

After my chat with the senior partner yesterday at Hotforex, I was assured my trading privileges for the PAMM wouldn’t be disabled until we are ready to make the transition to another brokerage house. Somehow, over the night hours they got disabled.

Since this is Friday, finding anybody in management in Europe actually working is nothing but a joke. Kudos to Diego for finally getting it fixed.

They finally got around to fixing the problem, but it wasn’t until 9:29 A.M. [Chicago time], a full 60 pips off the high in EURUSD that the system allowed us to trade. For those in the PAMM, you will see a small trade on your daily statement, in the EURUSD that resulted in a few pennies of profit. I made this trade to test whether or not we in fact actually have trading privileges. You don’t really know until you actually do something.

The frustrating thing about this is that I have been following the currencies [EURUSD, AUDUSD, and EURJPY] closely since I revised the algorithm on April 8^th. The buy/sell signals have been fabulous.

I was hoping we would see a rally today in the EURUSD that would trigger a sell signal. With elections in France and Greece this weekend that will most likely hurt the Euro, there’s no way it should be rallying. It was a perfect trade and would have netted us about 3%. “Thank you HotForex for screwing up [again].”

Not that it would have made any difference, because I would have gotten the same disable message anyway, but after the NFP report gold was a mess; very wide spread with very volatile price changes. When I saw this I immediately switched over my thinking to the currency pairs. Of the 3, Euro looked the most promising to short.

Anyway, water under the bridge.

Going forward I want to talk about 2 things specifically.

While I have had a pretty good relationship with HotForex, it is a blessing in disguise to be leaving. For some time, I have not been happy about fills and slippage in gold and the games there liquidity provider plays with the quotes and the spread. It has gotten worse over the months and years. And in all honesty, they have priced themselves out of the market [spread wise] with silver and the CFD’s. They seem to pay lip service to doing something about it.

Where we are going is totally different; we will be paying a few pennies more in the bid and ask spread on gold, but it has a WYSIWYG order system that is totally anonymous to the bank via STP [straight through processing]. What this means is simple; the price on my screen is what my fill is when I hit the button to buy/sell. No slippage; no games.

Now, this is also true in the currency pairs as well; no more dealer games. So, while our “official spread” might be a few pennies higher than what we have with HotForex, we save a ton of money with no slippage on our fills. Click, BAMM!, filled – all within a microsecond.

The other thing I want to talk about is the currency pairs. The algorithm really nails the turns. I’m getting emails from many people who are ecstatic about the algorithm revision, and who [amusingly] tell me not to worry about gold being stuck in a tight range with tough trading conditions.

“Uh yea, I know what the algo can do in currencies.”

So, to make a long story short, look for more daily currency trades in either EURUSD, EURJPY, or AUDUSD. We can do more volume, with tighter spreads, and in the EURUSD specifically I’m looking for volatility to pick up as Europe implodes.

While it would have been nice [don’t dwell on it vegas, don’t dwell on it] to catch today’s move in the Euro, the good news is that there is tomorrow and the day after that, and the day …

I’m in the process of finishing the paper work for the transition, and sometime next week our new PAMM should be created. I’ll keep you all informed. If you haven’t emailed me yet with your PAMM investor account number, please do so at your leisure within the next week; I will then send you detailed instructions on how to make the switch as easy for you as possible.

Have a good weekend everyone.

-vegas

P.S.
The cycle charts I will post over the weekend.