SLEEPING DOG

                                 vegas This Upcoming Weekend

 I’ll be back at the computer banging out the who, what, when , where and why of gold and AUD come Monday.

My hand is getting better, but for now I need the weekend to decompress a little and totally recover. Thanks for your patience.

Have a great weekend everyone

-vegas

IS VOLATILITY BACK?

                                                  Exit 110

I’ll have some comments from this week either tomorrow or Monday. My hand is getting better by the day, and “hunt and peck” with one hand will be over soon. Thanks for your patience.

We had a trade in both AUD and gold, that was signal related, that made us some money today.

Looks like volatility is making a comeback in gold. I sure hope so.

Have a good day everyone.

-vegas

JEKYLL & HYDE TRADING

                                              Trading Today

 We got the range today, but trading was very different between the Asian, Europe and U.S. sessions. I’ll have more on this and other trading topics once my hand heals. I’m not a big fan of “hunt and peck” typing with one hand.

So, give me another day or two, and I’ll be back at my keyboard.

Have a great day everyone.

-vegas

INJURY TIMEOUT

                                  He Still Feels Better Than Me

I’ll be back tomorrow with my thoughts on gold and AUD, but for today I’m calling in injured.

Have a good day everyone.

-vegas

SHORT & SWEET

                                   I’m Not As Bad As This Guy

OK, you all know what happened to me from my other post. No sense repeating myself.

Not exactly the best night for me to trade, as I got to trading a little late, but both markets deserve some comments. I’ll make this short since I’m a little hurtin’ today.

XAUUSD

Continued sell pressure from Friday spillover has gold on the defensive. As I write this, the algorithm has gone into “buy mode”. Since we are the end of today’s window for trading, we’ll pick up signals coming into tomorrow’s trade later tonight.

AUDUSD

We had a meaningless long trade in AUD today: Interest rate meeting by RBA this week keeping the lid on volatility. Second day in a row of below normal range for the day. This too shall pass. We’ll see what happens tomorrow.

Have a good day everyone, I’ll be back to normal for tomorrow’s trading.

-vegas

HIDE THE CHILDREN

                                       Long, Wrong & Gone

XAUUSD

One thing you can always say about the metals; when they decide to correct they don’t mess around. Ya think they caught a few longs going into the weekend?

Hopefully, today’s almost $40 / oz. range can manifest itself in higher intra day volatility going into next week and beyond. We’ll see how that goes.

For now, what can you say about the price action today except it was ugly on the downside.

We came into the day in “buy mode”, but because of the NFP report at 7:30 AM [Chicago time], nothing really mattered pre-report. As is typical with the “lottery” mentality, we quickly hit both new highs and new lows within 15 minutes of release.

To say that profit taking took over would be a gigantic understatement. Nobody it seems, wanted to go into the weekend long.

We got our first algorithm buy signal at the 9:15 AM [Chicago time] candlestick. Because prices had moved rather rapidly off the bottom, it was almost impossible to get long at an acceptable price. I therefore did 2 important things: 1) I cut my trade size, and 2) I waited for the first correction to get long.

The dilemma you face in buying the first quick bounce is that if you get in at a bad price, your stop needs to be necessarily wide. The second problem is that when the correction resumes, how deep is it going to go: does it hit a new low, or test the low before a nice short covering rally commences. This is why you cut your trade size: to give yourself some flexibility if it makes another new low.

I finally got long at 1739.76 with a stop at 1734.90. I got out at 1741.24 for a gain of $1.48 / oz.

A number of things to consider: 1) it’s Friday and it’s getting late in the day, 2) gold is down over $20 / oz and it doesn’t look like any kind of reversal is going to take place, 3) I’m up for the day at my minimum goal amount, and 4) I’m trying to buy into a selling frenzy.

Time to call it a day.

 AUDUSD

Who said AUD always correlates positively with gold?

Up, up and away to new highs. A nice steady gain throughout the day with only minor corrections along the way. I was looking to get long AUD, but it never corrected enough to give an algorithm buy signal.

Next week the Central Bank of Australia [RBA] meets for an interest rate decision regarding short term rates. A 25 bps [basis points] cut in rates is expected and baked into the market.

AUD feels like it’s on its way to 1.10 and setting a new record against the dollar. It’s been a very long time seeing gold down $40 / oz. and AUD up 100 pips.

We’ll pick things up again next week. Have a great Super Bowl weekend everyone!

-vegas

WHAT YOU DON’T LOSE MAKES YOU RICH

                     Building Negative Equity One Trade At A Time

Every day you don’t lose money trading, makes you 3 days closer to the wealth and financial freedom you desire.

We need time and volatility to make money trading; when we don’t get either or both, we walk. END. OF. STORY. PERIOD.

How many times have I seen the “trader face palm”? How many stars are there in the night sky? Yea, that many.

For the first 16 hours of trading today there was nothing but drifting dealer stop hunting: then came 45 minutes of “fun”, that I am sure created tax loss opportunities amongst  the trading community.

XAUUSD

                                         Are You Guys Hiring?

It’s days like this that always makes me think of what it would be like to be the sword-eater at the circus.

We came into the day in “buy mode” and for all of Asia and 90% of the European trade; the market had a whopping $11 / oz range. Up, down, back up, back down, new lows by a few ticks, up to the highs, you get the idea.

We got long on a buy signal and then got out with a few pennies / oz. when it turned around and started dropping. Lack of upside momentum was the key for me in getting out. As I say in my post today, in a low volatility environment, the slowest traders get eaten first.

Thanks to Weimar Ben Bernanke, gold went nuts when his prepared remarks before Congress were released. Elevator up turns into elevator down after the last retail trader finally gets long at the top.

Tomorrow is NFP Friday, so don’t expect much in the way of action until 7:30 AM Chicago time. We could get some position squaring that will extend the ranges.

I am definitely missing my buddy Ka-Chingggggg.

AUDUSD

Paste what I said about gold “here”: only it was even more boring and uneventful. No sense boring you to death, but the thing to note was that when gold made its run, AUD did almost nothing. Trading off that perceived positive correlation to gold are you? How’d that turn out for ya?

Have a good day everyone!

-vegas