EURUSD

Last night was the ECB conference, where apparently nothing particularly new came out. The EURUSD extended it's range yet again. Like yesterday, it just tagged my BUY-STOP order and immediately fell, not giving the robot a chance to set break-even. This BUY trade of 0.1 lots is currently down $47 on my demo account. 

It looks like I positioned my SELL-STOP far enough below the noise to avoid it also being triggered.

With the previous days BUY & SELL stop orders both being triggered and subsequently stopped out, we're down $134 for the week, or $181 if we take the current open BUY order into account. Ouch.

The break-out strategy which I'm currently demo trading looks like it's not working out too well. In previous weeks before starting this site, I have had some success with it.

If I had been trading live, I would have relied on the larger consolidation zone seen here in the EURUSD 1 hour chart for placing my trades. I placed trades the previous two days on smaller consolidation patterns mostly to see what would happen.

The current price action (smaller blue box) is not flat enough (supported and resisted by at least two, preferably three points) to draw any more consolidation boxes around in order to place any more trades, so we'll hold off placing any more trades for now.

If I were to alter my trading strategy, I would look at the following charts in order to try and determine where the price might be heading next.

Looking at the EURUSD daily chart, I can't quite figure it out.

It looks like the price action is bouncing up from a reasonably major support line. I have trouble drawing  trend-lines (in orange) however. I'm never sure where they should go. 

The steeper one I drew while looking at the 4 hr chart (not shown), and the price action is below it. Additionally, it appears price action is leveling off, shown both from the 1 hr consolidation chart, and from looking both at the EURUSD daily chart and several other pairs daily charts (not shown), such as GBPUSD, AUDUSD and USDCAD. This would suggest a reversal will occur soon. 

On the other hand, my poorly drawn trend-line on the daily chart above (the less step orange line) suggests the price will continue upwards. Even if this upwards momentum is just a retrace from the big move down from Oct 2011 to Jan 2012, it has only just gone past the 38.2 Fibonacci retracement level (not shown), and could possibly keep going as high as 1.362 before resuming the downtrend. 

Even my hourly EURUSD chart lends itself well to having a bullish trend-line drawn on it.

So several pieces of technical information (daily trend line, support line, hourly trend line) suggest continuing upwards momentum. Two pieces (4 hr trend line, consolidation on EURUSD and other pairs charts) suggest slowing momentum and possible reversal.

Taking fundamentals into account, any news out of Greece is likely to be towards the positive side, which tends to send the EURUSD up. Also, improving economic news from the US leads to a risk-on situation, which also helps push the EURUSD up.

Plus, you know, follow the trend, and all.

Quite a headache. This is why I've chosen the break-out strategy I have, even though at present it doesn't appear to be working. We'll see how it goes next week.