USA Trade Balance

Pair: GBP/USD
Bias: short
Result: Sell
Spread: 10 pips
Profit: -35 pips
Peak spike move: 35 pips

A sell was called and I immediately pressed my sell hotkey and a sell triangle appeared 35 pips below the current price. There wasn’t even a candle printed. 2 secs later the candle appeared and my sell order was right at the tip of the candle. I had been slipped big time. This has only happened once before so I am hoping it is a technical issue with oanda and not them playing forex cowboy games.

I will keep an eye on them over the next week or so – 25 pips slippage is not acceptable, even at news time.

There was a big deviation from forecasts so the price should have continued downwards, but it retraced all the way back up, so a double whammy for me. Not too pleased. This is the first “normal” report that has resulted in a loss.

Forex25 comments
Bottom Line on this trade is if a buy is called and the spread is 15 you should probably not trade it if you cannot tolerate a loss. If it calls a sell then i think it may be quite safe on a 15 pip spread.

Description
Measures the difference in value between imported and exported goods and services. A positive Trade Balance indicates that more goods and services were exported than imported over a given period. A rising trend has a positive effect on the nation’s currency. When higher levels of exports are sold to the world, demand for the nation’s currency is elevated as foreigners convert their native currency to purchase these exports. The Trade Balance also has a sizable impact on GDP because high demand for exports creates increased employment and production as domestic factories work to fill this demand.

UK CPI

Pair: GBP/USD
Bias: Slightly short
Result: Buy
Spread: 15 pips
Profit: 11 pips
Peak spike move: 20 pips

A small deviation from the forecast but enough for a buy. Price took off after I placed my order (I love that), and only moved 20 pips before hitting resistance. To be expected as the deviation was small.

Took profit by accident by hitting the sell hotkey. I had configured the ‘S’ key on my keyboard as a SELL_MARKET order and went to type something in another window with ‘S’ in the text which triggered my Sell order. I will now configure my hot keys to use the function keys instead so this mistake doesn’t happen again. Got 11 pips profit by mistake – could  have got around 18 pips if I hadn’t made the mistake.

I am using free auto hotkey software to speed up my trade entry. When configured correctly it is very good as positions can be entered and exited using one key press on the keyboard instead of clumsily clicking around with the mouse. Recommended – but make sure you configure and test it properly before using it on your live account!

Forex25 Comments
CPI is usually worth around 35 pips. Here are some stats:
10/17/2006 Initial spike = 37
9/12/2006 Initial spike 17 pips but drifted up to 50 in 10 minutes.
8/15/2006 Initial spike 43.

Description
Derivative of the Consumer Price Index (CPI) that excludes the volatile Food, Energy, Alcohol and Tobacco items. CPI with the exclusion of these volatile components is thought to be a better indicator of the underlying inflation trend and the central bank uses it as their primary inflation gauge, aiming to keep it at an annualized rate of 2%.