EUR GBP 10 Minute Chart - 27th March 2009

This particular chart, which I have taken from this morning’s trading session on the euro pound currency pair, provides a classic example of how to make money scalping in short term currency pairs. The chart is based on ten minutes, and as we can see, at 9.30 this morning, three consecutive shooting star candles arrived, one after the other, indicating weakness in the market and a possible trading opportunity. I took a chance at this point and placed a wide stop loss above my short position, but had I been more patient I would have waited until 11 am for the confirming bearish engulfing candle to arrive, at which point I would have gone short, yielding a nice return. Now the key thing to note, is that it is very easy to take the first signal that arrives and to enter the market too early – in this case I waited for the third shooting star, a clear sign that the market is weak, before entering. The key to success in scalping is to be patient and to wait for the opportunities to come to you, and not to try to force the trades. Just be patient. Scalping is an excellent way to improve you technical analysis skills, and also forces you to be disciplined with your stop loss placement and management. Even if you only practice in a demo account, it is well worth the effort as these signals arrive every day across all the pairs, and if one is not providing anything of interest, simply change to another time frame or another currency pair, and it is an excellent way to ‘paper trade’ by honing your skills – yes I know it is always harder when real money is at stake, but practice, practice, and more practice will make you a better trader!

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USD/SGD Weekly Candle Chart - 2nd March 2009

Sometimes when we are analysing charts we tend to forget some of the basics, so I thought I would show you a great chart this morning which I hope demonstrates the point. The chart we are looking at is the weekly for the US dollar and Singapore dollar, not one I trade very often, but it does illustrate the point, which is simply this – with the wide spread up bar from last week, and clear breakout above the resistance at 1.5300, we should be very confident that a long position should make us money in the next few days as all the signals are good. First we have strong up candles with wide spreads indicating momentum in the move. Secondly we have a support area immediately below providing protection in the event of any reversal, and finally we have all three moving averages pointing higher. All these factors illustrate the point that Japanese candlestick analysis only works when combined with Western indicators, a fact we often forget in our analysis. I just wanted to remind you in case you had forgotten!!