DEALER GAMES: TUESDAY EDITION

                              Computer Is Sick, But I Feel Better

If any of you were trading since last night, you would have noticed the HotForex liquidity provider in gold [XAUUSD] was playing games. All through the night and into the U.S. session I had a $0.70 - $1.00 spread in gold in my order box. Normally it is around $0.35.

I’m not handing free money to the dealer evahhhhhhhh.

The problem was eventually fixed, just as the gold market started to break on cartel European Bank selling [see my other post for details]. After the low was put in, we caught a little of the upside after the algo gave the “buy signal” with a normal spread, but once in this first position, the spread immediately widened again to about $0.70. I immediately exited the position with a small profit because I had no idea if we were going back to stupid spreads, and if the market had broken lower again I didn’t want to be forced out with a large spread.

Thankfully it was anomaly, and spreads stabilized around $0.35 within a minute or two. Meanwhile though, gold was racing higher by the minute. When I sensed an assault by the dealers on the high to take out buy stops, I got long again and sold a few minutes later at a small profit.

For 6 days we can’t get the gold market to touch the aqua lines, and now within 50 minutes it touches the bottom and top aqua line. Thank you Central Planners.

I’m still seeing red over the crap I had to deal with today; I’ll get over it and move on but I’m worried my hard drive might take it personally.

One thing about being a professional trader for over 30 years; that is the humungous number of times you look skyward and ask God if the circus is hiring. Thankfully, there not.

Have a good day 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