this week's calls

...reasonably pleased how last week's calls went with decent results on the swissy, cable and eur/gbp.
Now to this week's forecast:
EUR/USD: last week's long white brings a bullish tone to the world's favourite pair.. I won't be going long until I see a clear break of 1.30, mind.
GBP/USD: last week's spinning top is signalling a potential pause in the cable's current down trend. I'll be range trading initially within 1.37 and 1.43.
USD/JPY: another spinning top, but the lower highs and lows outweigh the longer lower shadow and I read a slightly stronger bearish bias. However, I'm still trading the range on this pair and looking for excuses to short above 99.25 with the reversal around 96.
USD/CHF: the SNB intervention left us with a bullish engulfing. You might try going long if price falls to 1.17, but I'd check out the action on EUR/CHF here, because that's the pair the gnomes in Zurich are worried about.

candle forecast for February 22-27

Looking at this week's forecast, I'd say the dragonfly on the eur points to upside action. However, I won't be entertaining a long position before I see a daily close above 1.30. If 1.30 offers strong resistance, look to go short with a target of 1.26.
Last week's spinning top suggests that sterling is also range-bound. As the trend is still down, I'm looking for downside action around 1.46 with a target at 1.41.
Last week's upside jpy action paid me well. However Friday's US banking jitters have left me looking for signs to go long around 92 with my sights set at 94.50.
Last week's chf candle was distinctly bearish. I'm waiting for a clean break of 1.15 before jumping in.

candle calls January 26-30

Now on to this week's calls. I made two on Sunday night when I said I was selling pound against the dollar and buying the dollar against yen.

Let's take a closer look:
gbp/usd: last week's long black smashed through long-standing support. We are bearish on cable this week.
support: 1.3500, resistance: 1.4370

usd/jpy: last week's long black formed an bearish engulfing with the previous week's short white. however, those long lower shadows and the tweezers which are formed by last week's candle and the similar long black of dec 15-19 suggest a bullish move for the pair.
support: 87.00 resistance: 90.00, then 92.40 and then 94.00.

candles burn my fingers

If you cast you mind back to last week (jan 19-23), you'll remember that we were selling usd/chf. this because resistance had held at around 1.1283 giving us a tweezers pattern of sorts which coupled with the spinning top of jan 12-16 seemed enough to get bearish (pretty tenuous in hindsight tbh). Anyhow, tenuous or not, the greenback had a good week against the greenback. It opened at 1.1140 and closed at 1.1558 , moving 418 pips against us. That's a forecast rating of -3.62%

We were bullish on usd/jpy, mainly because of the weekly close above 90 and jan 12-16's bullish spinning top with a long lower shadow. However, this too was not to be. The pair opened at 90.99 and closed at 88.82, moving 217 pips aginst us. That's a forecast rating of -2.44%

The week's total rating came in at -6.06%, and reduces the running total to

14.98 - 6.06 = +8.92%

What a week! (apologies)

It's been one hell of a week and I've been painfully aware that I have been lacking in the blog department.
I'll post a full report on last week's (crappy!) calls.
This week the candles are bearish on gbp/usd and bullish on usd/jpy.

Until tomorrow, cheerio.

Quick call as the market opens...

The week's a couple of hours underway so this is a quick post to make my calls:
usd/chf sell
usd/jpy buy

the full details will follow tomorrow as per usual.

goodnight.

the candles continue to edge ahead

...another positive week for our calls. the dollar gained against the euro as concerns for the integrity of the 16-nation unit grew as Greece's credit rating was downgraded and Portugal, Ireland and (most worryingly) Spain said to be on the watch list. The ECB cut rates by the anticipated 50 bps to 2.00%. this precipitated further euro weakness perhaps because it's seen as too little too late or because Jean-Claude Trichet cued up another round of cuts for his March rendezvous. eur/usd recovered somewhat on Friday when the Bank of America was thrown another US government lifeline, bringing some much needed optimism to the markets.
With eur/usd opening the week at 1.3455 and closing on Friday at 1.3288, our short call brought in 167 pips. This gives us a forecast rating of +1.26%

Our buy call for usd/chf saw modest success with the pair opening at 1.1135 and closing at 1.1170. This brought a princely 35 pips into the pot. 35 pip is 0.31% of the closing price and thus gives us a forecast rating of +0.31%

All in all, the week's forecast total is +1.57%

Bringing our running total to +14.98%

Next week will be a difficult one to call with the Martin Luther King Day holiday and Barack Obama's inauguration bringing uncertainty to the markets. I'll be posting the candle signals tomorrow - until then, have a good weekend.