Welcome to my trading journal. This is where I talk through my thoughts on the financial markets, and analyze my personal trading performance. I hope to be a guidepost you can compare your trading to — a resource I wish I had when I was starting out. Today, I’m analyzing the Forex market for January 23rd, 2024, read on to see my thoughts.
More struggles getting out of bed this morning. I’m realizing: I got a new Fitbit and it’s alarms don’t continue until you manually turn them off. The watch sends out like 6 vibrations and then stops. So if those 6 vibrations don’t actually wake me up, then I just don’t wake up? I guess? Seems like a pretty big flaw, and I need to figure out a better alarm in the meantime.
That said, though, I did get up a little before the market opened in the US. I had a protein shake and some coffee, and now it’s a-quarter-’til-nine, and I’m ready to dive in. I’ve pulled out all of the pairs that I want to look at based on yesterday’s analysis and sorted them by volume, and that’s how I’m going to start this morning.
GBP/CHF – Long
I took a cursory glance at all of the charts I singled out, just in case something was moving at the time that I didn’t want to miss. That wasn’t the case, fortunately, and I ended up reordering the pairs based on what looked more viable than the others. First up is Pound-Franc.
Starting on the 2 hour chart, price has been pushing up since the beginning of the year. It made a pretty strong spike last Wednesday and then another one on Thursday, but it’s been a bit more of a steady rise since then. Looking this morning, price made an okay up-move overnight, but then pulled back to the 20 MA; and the current candle is up, but as I’ve been typing this, it’s been falling off of the highs.
The main thing giving me pause here is the fact that today’s highs aren’t quite as high as the recent highs that were made yesterday, so I’m a bit worried that price could stall out at that level; but overall this has been strong so I might be okay.
Dropping down to the 15 minute chart, I see a decent bull-pullback; but the highs/my entry point there would be just below the highs from yesterday, which I don’t love. On top of that, given the spread, my entry would be right around that level anyway. I like the bull-pullback on the hourly chart, too, and with those prior highs as an entry, it makes more sense on a longer-term chart.
I haven’t picked a target here yet, but I think I’m going to and pull the trigger on the hourly chart if the numbers are there. They’re not. Moving on.
EUR/NZD – Long
This could be either really good or really bad. Price rather steadily pushed up for the first half of this month, but over the last couple of weeks, has been on more of a vertical push. Yesterday, price made a strong spike, making a new high, but price pulled b ack through most of the 2nd half of the day. This morning, price has remained weak, but is appearing to stall on the 50 MA (the current candle is sitting on it, while the previous one has a long lower wick right at that level).
This could be a reversal — there’s definitely a new swing low, then a lower high and is currently making a lower-low. But this could also be the pullback needed for a strong Long play.
Dropping down to the 15 minute chart, things don’t look much better. In fact, the reversal looks more pronounced here. This was an incredibly deep pullback, so I’m not sure longs are in play anymore (and I’m not ready to short it, I don’t think), so I think I’ll hold off. Maybe I’ll revisit later and look to put in an order based on the daily chart.
EUR/CHF – Long
Well, I was bullish here, but it’s current candle is really making me rethink that. Price had been strong over the majority of the last 2 weeks, but it peaked last Friday, and started to roll a bit to the downside. That rolling over looked like it would stall at the 50 MA and continue it’s uptrend, but that brings us to the current candle.
Price pushed up about 16 pips — even pushing above the prior swing high — and looked like the strength was in fact coming back in to this pair. From there, though, price dropped pretty strongly, and that candle now has a really long upper-shadow.
This pullback feels too deep, and any strength that seems to come in to the pair gets wiped out pretty quickly, so I’ll hold off here. I almost want to short this, actually, but that seems pretty hasty as well. I’ll leave this alone for a bit right now and maybe revisit in a couple hours to see how it’s moving.
NZD/CAD – Short
It looks like I may have missed the move here. Price has been pushing down for the last week — steadily stepping down and largely riding the 20MA. Yesterday, price made a stronger-than-usual spike, and pushed through the 20 up to the 50 EMA. Price stalled there, though, and has been pushing back down all day today.
At 6am, there was another rally up to the 20MA again, and price dropped pretty strong from there, and is now sitting on a minor key area that formed yesterday when it bottomed out. I don’t want to miss anything here, so I’m going to look for a target and run some numbers. Price is stalling a bit right now, so it might be my entry opportunity.
I’m prepared to take this longer-term, too (maybe entering the trade on the 1h/2h charts), because this looks definitely weak. Stay tuned to see if I ended up getting in to a trade here or not; and how it goes if so.
EUR/JPY – Long
Overall, this looks like it should be a decent long play, but it’s recent price action is giving me pause. Price has been largely moving sideways over the past week, save for a 1/2 day spike that was quickly wiped out. This morning, price dropped pretty strong and took out the lows of the range it had been in over the last week. And on top of that, price looks like it’s rolling to the downside.
Additionally, after the initial push down this morning, price has rallied. But the rally has simply gotten back up to the lows of that range and not much higher. Right around here, there appears to be more weakness than strength, to me.
On the other hand, though, if I zoom out to the daily chart, price looks even more strong, and this slight pullback looks more like a base. It still is rolling over a bit, still, but appears to be stronger than weak.
This is another situation where I wish I could put in an OCO order. I’d set an entry above the highs and below the lows of the current range on the daily chart, and manage the trade in whichever direction it triggers. I can’t do that though, and since I have a bit of a bias in both directions, I’ll hold off. Even if I wanted to trade this long, I don’t see the opportunity until it gets back up to the highs of the current range. I’ll keep it on my list and see how it’s moving later today/tomorrow.
Conclusion
It’s approaching lunchtime in Eastern time, and Kiwi-Cad triggered, so I think I’m going to call it here. I looked at 12 charts, called out and analyzed 5 of them and took a trade, so this was a decent morning. I could do better — get up earlier, get to the charts earlier, maybe even look through more charts — but I don’t want to overwhelm myself, or do busy work just to feel like I’ve done something. I’ve got other work I want to accomplish, so I’m going to work on that a bit.
Thanks for reading! Let me know in the comments what you thought about today’s analysis and if you were able to capitalize on any moves in the market. Stay tuned to see how the NZD/CAD trade went and check back frequently for more analysis and trades!