The Panthenon Investment Group

Today, was a day the market was looking out for the UK PMI data.  Gladly, the Eurozone PMI data came in slightly upbeat.

Believing that the UK data will also come in slight brighter, I put in a LONG GBPUSD limit order at 1.5260 when the spot was trading at 1.5240.  I purposely put it 20bps out of the money, just in case I was wrong.  I also had a SL at 1.5245.

When the data came out better at 51.3 versus expectations of 50.3, the GBP started to take off, triggering my order at 1.5260, as it reached 1.52780, we squared the position.

Ultimately, it hit a high of 1.5289 and has since come back down to 1.5265.

We locked in trading profits of 20bps or 0.13%, not a bad quick scalp for the day.

Last Thursday, April 24th was the much awaited preliminary GDP numbers for Q1 2013 for the U.K.

After two consecutive quarters of negative growth, there was great expectation and anticipation in this number.

We felt that it was a market mover and place a spot trade at 1.5288 with a stop loss at 1.5258.

When the data came out positive 0.3%, the pound shot up to 1.5408 in 3 seconds!

We square the position at 1.5470 for a whopping 182bps trading profit or 1.19%.

We were given another opportunity to square off the option on April 2nd and we took it.

We sold the call option at the spot of 1.5240, against our breakeven of 1.5110, we realized a trading profit of 130bps or a 0.85% absolute gain.

We will stay sidelines till we get a better feel through our analysis, just where the GBP will be heading.

For now, the Daily Chart; is showing further weakness in the GBP with trend trading below a declining cloud.  The lowest level in 2012 was 1.5352, in 2011 it was 1.5467 and in 2010, it was 1.5085, so the current spot of 1.5086 is incredibly low for the GBP, however, technical analysis does not show that there is a base.