Friday, February 24, 2006

How do you start your day?

Well the first thing I do, when I switch on my displays is trying to get an overview, looking at longer term charts of the currencies I follow.
Currencies trade 24h a day and living in Germany I usually miss the asian session. Contrary to the Forex market the Globex traded currency futures are all denominated against the US Dollar, making it easy for the trader to analyze the night action. My preliminary assumption is, that it's the World against the USD or the USD against the world, meaning all charts show an uptrend or all charts show a downtrend, if the USD is rising.
Globetrader_214
If I see something different, I know the trading day might become difficult, as there are cross currents, as traders liquidate or build positions in currency pairs outside of the USD world. Something we can see on the chart below. The Yen (JPY) is up and trading near the highs of the day, while the Euro and the British Pound (GBP) are flat with a downward bias. Of the latter two the GBP is trading stronger than the Euro as it held most of yesterdays gains, while the Euro is back into it's old range and I expect it to test the 1.1900-1.1880 area.
I also have the electronically traded crude Oil on the chart (QM), as both the Australian Dollar as well as the Canadian Dollar are affected by commodity prices, especially by the Oil and Gold prices. So if Oil goes up, I expect to see CAD up or trade with an upward bias in the european session, if it remained flat during the asian session.