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Tag Archives: gbpusd

27 October @ UK Q3 preliminary GDP

Moral of the story is not to trade at 6am in the morning NY time and also when one has not had the chance to check the noise in the media.

I am currently in New York by the invitation of Goldman Sachs for a week.

I knew yesterday there was the UK Q3 GDP number coming out.  However, I didn’t know whether the media has been drumming up the impending event or not.

Nonethless, at about 6am NY time,  I decided to put on my straddle trade with the following details: –

 

GBPUSD   –   1.5320   –   1.5340   –   1.5360

Spot was at 1.5340

As it turned out the GDP number was weak, however ,the market didn’t really move that much.  Well, it did move enough to trigger my bid if offered trade at 1.5320 and then after that, it started moving back up, so before I could be stopped out at 1.5340, I decided to square off the trade at 1.5328 for a 8bps trading loss.

Moral of the story is don’t trade when one has not had the time to catch up with the noise in the media.  I am in NY since Monday and will be returning to Singapore on Saturday.

Later today, will be Janet Yellen’s time, what will she do?

15 October @ US CPI and Jobless Claims

As this is a sensitive data for the Fed and the world, I decided to put on my straddle on three currencies as follows: –

EURUSD   –   1.1416   1.1436   -1.1456

GBPUSD   –   1.5427   1.5457   1.5497

USDJPY   –   117.90   –   118.26   –   118.56

Core CPI was slightly elevated, overall CPI was flat, jobless claims improved to 255K against forecast of 269K, and Empire state manufacturing came was weaker at -11.4 versus expectation of -7.3.

Overall, USD bias, but the market didn’t move very much.  I took out the GBPUSD order, leaving behind the EUR and JPY order.

Both the EUR and JPY orders were triggered on the Offered side.

I squared the EUR at 1.1370 and the JPY at 118.70 for a trading profit of 46bps for the EUR and a negligible 0.14 yen.

This is what I mean when the event or data is not expected to make the fx market volatile, this strategy of the straddle trade doesn’t really work well.  It needs the volatility.

14 October 2015 @ GBPUSD; Claimant Count and Unemployment Rate

I was wondering the past 48 hours why there wasn’t any noise in the media about the UK Claimant Count and Unemployment Rate since BOE, Carney is focusing on raising interest rates next year and not wanting to fall behind the U.S.

I decided to put on my straddle at 4:25pm as follows: –

GBPUSD  –  1.5285   –   1.5315   –   1.5345

When the data came out it was self cancelling because the Claimant Count was slightly higher but the unemployment rate improved.

GBP hardly moved, so I took out the trade.

13 October 2015 – UK CPI data

CPI data for the UK is a hot data on the radar screen because BOE, Carney is watching CPI, GDP, employment, housing prices, etc in his decision to raise interest rates next year.

At 4:25pm, I decided to put my straddle trade on the GBPUSD as follows: –

GBPUSD   –   1.5300   –   1.5325   –   1.5350

Spot rate was 1.5325.

I squared the trade at 1.5245 for a trading profit of 55bps.  Not bad for half an hour’s work.

2 Oct…………WHAT A FRIDAY!

I was expecting that the non farm payroll numbers on Friday, October 2nd will be closely watched as a signal for whether Janet Yellen will be raising interest rates this year.  The noise in the media was playing up this event.

I on the other hand, had to make an urgent business trip to KL on Thursday through Saturday.

It was so funny, I was out for dinner in the Subang area where the internet connection is not always the most stable.  I was with a group of business people having dinner.  At about 8:25pm I excused myself from the group saying that I needed a few minutes to catch up with an old friend at the bar.  I went up to this lady at the bar and explained to her that I needed to access the fx markets on my Iphone and that I would be most grateful if she would pretend that we were long lost friends and keep me with her for about half an hour.  She hugged me and started acting up the role…………TOTALLY SURPRISED ME.

It’s terrible trying to do an fx trade on an Iphone, the screen is small and at the back of my head was the worrying fear that I may lose connection anytime.

I decided to do a straddle on the GBP and EUR: –

EURUSD  –  Stop if Offered; 1.1130, Spot; 1.1163, Stop if Bid; 1.1190

GBPUSD  –  Stop if Offered; 1.5120, Spot; 1.5150, Stop if Bid; 1.5180

As we all know, the non farm payrolls came out way below expectations of 201K at 142K, but what was more surprising that the markets reacted negatively was the adjustment to the previous month down to 136K from 173K.  I don’t know how this will affect the running average, but for the time being, it’s SELL USD.

By this time, I already knew this lovely lady’s name, Cassandra and she was watching the fx markets with me on my Iphone, totally fascinated and what was happening in front of her eyes.

As it turned out the EUR popped up aggressively, the GBP was more of a roller coaster ride.  Cassandra was getting so excited grabbing onto my hand, screaming, wanting to know when I am going to get out of the trade.  She was quite distracting!  My group  who was watching from the other end of the restaurant was wondering what was going on.

At about 8:50pm, I decided to square off the trades in fear that the whole thing may get out of hand and also the fear that I may lose internet connection.

Squared the EURUSD at 1.1291 and the GBPUSD at 1.5216 for a trading profit of 101bps and 36 bps respectively on $10Bn trade size each.

Cassandra kept on screaming and grabbing onto me while I was trying to get out of the trade, really, you need a very strong resolve to focus and concentrate when you have a beautiful woman distracting the hell out of you.

I thanked her for helping me out, ironically, she thanked me as she said she never experienced something like this ever before, she whispered in my ear that she had an orgasm.  I burst out laughing and she blushed.

I returned to my group and they were all drilling me on what the F_ _ _ happened at the bar.  I just told them that my old time friend was excited seeing me after a 10 year lapse.

My blog followers have been asking me whether I hooked up with Cassandra again later in the night?  Yes……………and that’s another story……….PG.

Post FOMC @ 18 September 2015

When I finally woke up in the morning on Friday after staying up at the office till about 3:30am, it was interesting to see how the fx rates have developed during Asian time on Friday.

If I had kept all the trades open, what would have happened?

AUDUSD would have been stopped out at 8:17am.

GBPUSD would have been stopped out at 8:28am

EURUSD would have been ok

However, the big winner would have been the USDJPY.  You will recall, I squared the position half an hour into the press conference with no win no loss, that is, all square.  If I had kept the position opened till late Friday morning, I would have made one big figure on the JPY, that is, 1.15 yen.  Wow!

Then again, it is not our business to hold spot positions opened for so long and more so, unsupervised.  Whenever, we have an open spot position, we will monitor it on screen till we square off the position and that usually happens within an hour or at the most two hours.

FOMC Rate Decision!

I really don’t know or didn’t know which way the flag was going to blow, simply because the media was creating alot of noise on both sides of the coin; one camp of FIs says Janet will raise interest rate, and the other camp of FIs says that Janet will hold.

As for me, I really don’t care, all I care about is the potential volatility coming into the rate decision.  The more noise the higher the volatility.  I am more interested in the verbiage in the statement and more importantly, the press conference.

I decided to put my straddle trade but with a wider goal post for safety reasons at about 1:44am: –

EURUSD  –  Stop if Bid; 1.1370, Spot; 1.1330, Stop if Offered 1.1290

GBPUSD  –  Stop if Bid; 1.5560, Spot; 1.5529, Stop if Offered 1.5480

AUDUSD  –  Stop if Bid; 0.7210, Spot; 0.7165, Stop if Offered 0.7125

USDJPY  –  Stop if Bid; 121.20, Spot; 120.85, Stop if Offered 120.35

All stop loss levels were at spot.

When the announcement of ‘HOLD’ came out, the market spiked triggering all my trades, but it also quickly settled back down and I was potentially looking at being stopped out.  Thankfully, the majors slowly moved back up before reaching my stop loss levels.

At about 2:16am, I decided to square off all my trades as follows: –

EURUSD  –  Squared at 1.1400, minus 1.1370, trading profit was 30bps

GBPUSD  –  Squared at 1.5600, minus 1.5560, trading profit was 40bps

AUDUSD  –  Squared at 0.7210, minus 0.7210, zero trading profit

USDJPY  –  Squared at 120.35, minus 120.35, zero trading profit

We did US$10Bn on each trade and all orders were OCO, which meant that we didn’t have to double up our collateral for margin.

The press conference is ongoing now, but I think I will go to sleep now because I believe her responses to questions will be to be supportive, not necessarily accommodating, probably quite neutral.

I was really expecting alot more volatility but it really didn’t happen, oh well cie la vie.  70bps trading profit isn’t too bad since we did the trades on size.

 

 

UK Services PMI

The UK economy has been wavering back and forth with no strong solid trend.  I felt that today’s UK Services PMI could be a telling sign as to where the economy will be heading and potentially a volatile data event.

So at about 4:25pm, I did a straddle trade with the following details: –

Stop if Bid: 1.5300

Spot: 1.5263

Stop if Offered: 1.5230

When the data came out at 4:30pm, it was weaker at 55.6 compared to expectations of 57.6, unfortunately, the the GBP didn’t really dip that much, it went to a low of 1.5238 and rebounded.  It didn’t trigger my trade, so I decided to pull the trade out.

It’s now 9:20pm and the GBP is holding at 1.5264.  So in hindsight it was prudent to pull out the trade, as nothing really happened going into early NY session.

I guess the world is more focused on tonight’s ECB and Mario Draghi!!!

BOE Rate Decision!!!!!

Having a strong hunch that the BOE rate decision will be a volatile event, I decided to place a straddle trade at about 6:50pm: –

Spot: 1.5600

Stop if Bid; 1.5630, SL 1.5600

Stop if Offered; 1.5570, SL 1.5600

It was no surprise when the decision was announced, where the rate was held at 0.50% and asset purchase maintaining at 375Bn.

What is more important is what Carney is going to say.  I was of the opinion that he would talk the GBP up as the UK wanted to cool down property prices as the property market was showing signs of a bubble.  However, as it turned out the comments revolved around inflation and the fact that inflation went down to zero in June, rather far away from the target of 2%.  I believe the UK should adjust its target going forward much like the U.S.  In the case of the U.S., the inflation target was lowered from 2% to 1.6%.

Reasons given by Carney for the low inflation environment is because of low commodity prices and underutilized capacity.

As it turned out the GBP collapsed to a low of 1.5465, however, the real flows were at about 1.5488.

My trade was triggered but in the opposite direction from my hunch which was fine.  It triggered the offer trade at 1.5570, and I squared the position at 1.5500 for a trading profit of 70bps on a trade size of 3Bn.

The GBP is now rising back to 1.5530 on slightly elevated unemployment claims out of the U.S.

This is a great lesson in not trying to second guess what the central banker is going to do, or for that fact, what the data is going to be, what’s more important is to ascertain whether the event is going to be a volatile one or not and if it is, then, my fx strategy will ALWAYS work!

What a TRADE!  I am done for tonight!

 

UK; Claimant Count and Unemployment

GBPUSD has been trending upwards the past week, while the EURUSD has been going the opposite direction.

I don’t believe the GBPUSD is sustainable and any negative economic data will see a significant reversal.

This time around will be a triple top; once on May 14th, another on May 22nd. Near this year’s high of 1.5780 on May 14th, happened once this year.

I am going to take a punt and do a OTM put trade: –

GBPUSD  –  Spot 1.5662; Stop if Offered at 1.5640 and SL at 1.5660

Let’s see what happens in the next few mins.