Showing posts with label EURUSD. Show all posts
Showing posts with label EURUSD. Show all posts

Monday, 13 April 2020

6th day, no gain no loss…



As you can imagine after reading the title, it was a flat day. Actually, I made a small profit but it didn’t cover the commissions. Let’s see what happened during that day in the EUR/USD and GBP/USD futures:


British Pound


It was a directional day for the British Pound without any big spike or swings as we saw in the previous days.  This was explained by the increase of COVID-19 cases in the US and the expected approval of further help by the FED.

6B 06/20 


It raised almost without stopping until 14:30 where the price was ranging between 1.2387 and 1.2405. In one of these retracements, the algo was triggered and it sent a buy of 5 lots. I wasn’t sure about opening the position considering its morning trend and range. One of the best aspects of using algos is that we remove discretionary decisions and feelings. After entering in the position, like the most part of the times, the GBP/USD futures fell to 1.2374. After that, it rebounded breaking the highs of the day and it reached the 1.2429 level. It couldn’t breach these levels and it went back to 1.2400 where the algo closed the position.

6B 06/20 trade chart


This chart shows more detailed of what I explained in the previous paragraph.

6B 06/20 trade


In contrast with other days, the MAE ($437.50) is around 1/3 of the MFE ($1281.25) and this shows how well the market behaved for the algo I’m using. One of the problems is that the ETD is still high because the algo is not closing with a signal. Until now, the algo has closed according to the time configured.


Euro FX


The Euro vs the US Dollar didn’t have a clear trend. It was a total swing. It seems that the EUR was stronger in the morning while the USD took its place in the afternoon.

6E 06/20


As you can see, and as it was expected, the algo was triggered in a retracement. It performed well during the first hour. After that, the Euro dropped strongly but seems that the traders didn’t believe in this movement and the buying pressure took the price to the point in which the position was open. At this point, it continued to rise to 1.0909 where the dollar strength came back. The position was closed at 17:08 London Time

Trades and account balance


I didn’t get profit in both trades. I lost $398.75 in the EuroFX trade including commissions and I won $395.75 in the British Pound also including commissions.

08/04/2020 trades


I shouldn’t be upset… I made a profit without considering commissions. At the end of the day is not real money and this is good learning and I would like to remember that in my opinion the commissions and the slippage should be included when you are backtesting a system. In my experience, if the system is not good enough this will make the difference between making profit or loss.

Account Balance


One of the conclusions that I found in the first 6 days is that probably I should implement a fixed take profit or maybe consider a trailing stop. It’s early to say but probably I will run some tests to see if the statistic ratios are better than my current algo.

Thanks for reading this post!


#algorithmic_trading, #Trading, #Euro, #EUR, #GBP, #British Pound, #USD, #EURUSD, #GBPUSD, #Dollar, #performance, #profit, #loss, #FED, #COVID-19, #Robotrader

Thursday, 23 November 2017

Concerns about the US inflation

Yesterday, we saw the FOMC meeting minutes and they delivered what the market expected. They held the rates unchanged and they confirmed that the process of balance sheet normalization will continue. The Fed highlighted the performance of the economy and the low unemployment. It’s true that the US economy is strong and the last GDP reading was better than expected. However, everything is not as the Fed would like it, and FOMC members expressed their concern about the inflation outlook. Let’s see how the markets reacted:


EURUSD December 2017 future

     Source: TradingView, EURUSD Dec17 future, 1 Hour

The Euro has been rising since the beginning of November. If we add to this trend the inflation concerns the result is a weaker dollar. We didn´t see a significant movement, the candle highlighted in yellow shows the upside movement after the FOMC minutes, as you can see the biggest movement was earlier in the morning.

10 Year T-Note December future


     Source: TradingView, 10 Year T-Note  Dec17 future, daily

Everytime that there is a negative outlook the bond futures raise, and this is what the 10Y T Note future did yesterday. I’ve been following for a while this contract and there is a clear triangle that if broken, I believe that it would go up to the resistance at 125.75.


2 Year T-Note December future


    Source: TradingView, 2 Year T-Note  Dec17 future, daily

In contrast with the 10 Year T-Note, the 2 Year T-Note hasn’t swung. The bearish trend is remarkable.


10 Year T-Note - 2 Year T-Note December spread


     Source: TradingView, 10 Year T-Note-2 Year T-Note Dec17 spread, daily

I’ve chosen to spread 1 contract of the 10 Year T-Note future versus 3 contracts of the 2 Year T-Notes. In my opinion is the best spread you can make with these two futures.


Yield between the 10 Year T-Note and the 2 Year T-Note


    Yield between the 10 Year T-Note and the 2 Year T-Note, source: St. Louis Fed

Historically this yield spread is an indicator or the recessions. We can see that it has narrowed during the last 4 years. This indicates the flattening of the interest rate curve.One of the reasons is the improvement of the US economy is pushing the short-term yields higher. The second reason is there is a strong buying pressure in the long maturities that doesn´t allow the yields to go up.

Conclusion


The Federal Open Market Committee statement doesn´t  significantly affect the markets if it delivers what the analysts expected. If it had been hawkish on the inflation outlook, we would have seen a strong bond selloff and buying pressure in the USD. The macro indicators are important but in trading is better to focus on the difference between the figure and the value expected by the market participants. I would use the yield spread introduced in this post for a medium or long-term investment. I will publish a strategy based on the yield spread between the US 10 year bond and the US 2 year bond in the future.
Have a good trading!!



Disclaimer

I wrote this article myself, and it expresses my own opinions that shouldn't be used as a trading advice. Trading carries considerable risk due to the high leverage involved

Saturday, 18 November 2017

How can we make a strategy profitable modifying a couple of things?

Nowadays trading is in vogue, even more, if we consider the new cryptocurrency trend. Basically, everyone wants to jump in. The trader lifestyle is desired by all the people. Sadly, trading is harder than what the social media shows. The industry is changing a lot. Concepts such as machine learning, artificial intelligence are taking importance in leading investment banks and hedge funds as they are heavily investing in it.

Why do the biggest companies invest in machine learning, artificial intelligence, and algorithms?


It´s very difficult to replace an experienced trader because he knows how to adapt the strategies in different economic cycles and conditions. Some hedge fund managers are hiring a lot of developers and programmers to create algos that emulate the behaviour of their best traders. This seems really expensive, at least in the first years, but I believe that in the long run will save money for the hedge fund. How can you emulate the trader behaviour? In my humble opinion, I would divide the strategies applied by the trader in little pieces and I will study the trader´s track record in order to study the conditions (price, type of order, macro events on that day, news) of the trades. Once I understand the reasons I will try to replicate its piece of strategy and I will code it. Once it’s coded and tested, I will assign a subaccount to use this strategy and I will do the same process for each strategy. To sum up, I will have a trading account made-up of subaccounts that run a specific strategy. We can say that the main account is the portfolio and the subaccounts are different traders or fund managers.
This process can take a lot of time and some parts can be difficult to replicate.

What aspects should we modify to make a simple strategy profitable?


The strategy is based on the EURUSD futures but I'm not going to explain how it works. The main purpose of this post is to show you how to modify a simple strategy to improve the profitability and reduce the risk. It only trades once a day if the conditions are met. This backtest shows the last 5 years. The initial portfolio was 50000 USD.

Plain strategy



This is the strategy without any modification. 

     Statistics of the strategy, own elaboration using RStudio

The mean is positive and it shows that the system will make on average 16.21 USD per day. Sadly is not that easy, because there are winning days and losing days. The best day it banked a 3250USD profit. On the other hand, the worst day shows a loss of 2440 USD. The Sharpe Ratio is very low. The returns’ distribution was a normal distribution around 0. The main problem is that there were trades that lost a big percentage of the portfolio. This is why I decided to limit the loses in the second strategy. Let’s see the maximum Drawdown.


     Max drawdown and track record of the strategy, own elaboration using RStudio

Any serious investor can’t tolerate this drawdown considering the size of the portfolio. I wouldn’t be confident to use this system after reviewing the track record. Basically, it goes sideways.

Strategy 2, limiting loses


In this case, I decided to limit the loss to 600USD per day. Let’s see if the system has improved or not.



     Statistics of the strategy, own elaboration using RStudio

In general terms, this system is worse than the first one. The system makes 15,19 USD per trade on average, which is  1 dollar less than in the first strategy. The worst loss has been limited but the distribution contains more days on the negative side. The days with big swings generated the most part of the loses. The return is only 19.96% in the backtesting.




     Profit and Loss from trades distribution, own elaboration using RStudio

The losing days are concentrated around the maximum loss allowed.


     Max drawdown and track record of the strategy 2, own elaboration using RStudio

The distribution is not appealing to me. The best thing is that the max drawdown is smaller than in the first strategy. This system is clearly limited by days with big ranges.

Strategy 3, looking for different entries


Once I limited the losses of the first system and I checked that it wasn’t working as I would like it, I decided to change my entries. Will this be the solution?


     Statistics of the strategy, own elaboration using RStudio

Modifying the entries improved a lot the system. Now the system mades 49.88 USD per day. The standard deviation is lower. It would have returned 81.4% in 5 years, around 17% per year. What a change!! The winning days' percentage has increased and the Sharpe Ratio is very good. You should think that the commissions are not included.


    Max drawdown and Track record of the system, own elaboration

This is the best point. Look at the line! Now the system is consistent and the maximum drawdown has decreased a lot.

Conclusion


Even if you have read or heard about a successful trading system, you shouldn’t trade it without testing it before. We have seen that with minor tweaks the strategy can improve a lot. I hope that this post will help you to understand the process. The sky is the limit, in this field, the creativity doesn’t have limits. If you are a professional trader this can help you to test ideas and become more confident. Another important point is that you shouldn’t invest in these strategies even when the statistics are good. You should test them with a paper trading account and compare that the behaviour is similar to the previous backtesting. This is crucial because there is the risk of overfitting. I hope you like.

Have a good trading!



Disclaimer

I wrote this article myself, and it expresses my own opinions that shouldn't be used as a trading advice. Trading carries considerable risk due to the high leverage involved

Thursday, 26 October 2017

Why is the European Central Bank dovish? Interest Rate strategies

The European Central Bank is very conservative at the time of taking decisions on economic policy. And this fact has been confirmed again today. As expected, the ECB will cut asset purchases to 30 billion euros from 60 billion euros. This will start in January and it will last for nine months to September. One of the reasons why the ECB remained cautious is the weak inflation.

What did the EURUSD?


After the decision, the Euro plunged. 

Source: TradingView, EURUSD Dec17 Future, 30 min
     Source: TradingView, EURUSD Dec17 Future, 30 min

The market didn’t expect a hawkish decision and it was reflected in the movement of the euro. I started the day falling. You can see how the volumes got bigger around the interest rate decision and the ECB conference. Draghi was optimistic about the eurozone growth but he signaled that is concern about the inflation. Technically, the EURUSD futures has broken 2 important levels (1.1793 and 1.1729)

What is the real reason behind this decision? My opinion


Economics is a social science and predicting the individuals' behaviour is really difficult. Let me make an example to show my thoughts about this dovish decision.
Let’s imagine an ideal world in which the most important economies keep performing like the last couple of years, China’s GDP growth meets the 7%, the commodities keep rising, the Federal Reserve raises rates and makes substantial cuts to the asset purchases and there isn´t any economic shock. In this context, the US dollar will rise vs the euro. The conservative ECB policy will support a weak euro, and with the conditions mentioned, it will help Europe to keep growing and the inflation will peak.

On the other hand, applying the economic policy in Europe is difficult due to the differences between the strong economies and the peripheric economies. So whatever is applied needs to be good in general terms without affecting in a negative way to certain economies.

As a theory, it’s valid but it’s very difficult that all of these will happen.


What can we see in the Euribor futures?


Euribor futures are the interest rate futures in Europe. You will see in the following charts that an improvement of the European economy is not discounted.

Euribor Jun18 future


Source: Barchart, Euribor Jun18
     Source: Barchart, Euribor Jun18

As you can see it fell at the beginning of this year, showing an improvement of the economy. At this time the inflation was growing and it hit 2% in March. The euro was weak in this period, the EURUSD was trading around 1.06. Since then, the Euribor jun18 has been rising due to the low inflation, the Brexit, the lack of change in the economic policy. Considering the uptrend, the market participants don´t expect changes in the economic policy neither a big improvement of the European economy.

Euribor spreads

Euribor March 18 – June 18

Source: Barchart, Euribor Mar18-Jun18
    Source: Barchart, Euribor Mar18-Jun18

Euribor March 18 – December  18

Source: Barchart, Euribor Mar18-Dec18
     Source: Barchart, Euribor Mar18-Dec18

These spreads show the same as the outright explained before. A falling spread means that the difference between the two futures is decreasing. Talking about the interest rate curve, we can see that the yield curve is flattening. The main difference between both spreads is the volatility. Obviously, the 9-month spread moves more than the 3-month spread. They are in lows of the year, I would consider buying if I expected an economic improvement. At the moment, I wouldn’t buy because I don’t  see any sign of reversal.

Another strategy to consider is a Euribor butterfly. 

     Source: Barchart, Euribor butterfly Jun18-Sep18-Dec18

The butterfly is in a support and it´s trading at the lows of the year. I think it´s a better choice than the spreads at the moment.


Euribor spread June 18 – June 19


Source: Barchart, Euribor Jun18-Jun19
     Source: Barchart, Euribor Jun18-Jun19

The main difference with the other spreads is that the overall trend is bullish. This means that the traders expect that the economy and the inflation will be better in 2019 than 2018. The main problem is that the triangle is one of the most dangerous figures in technical analysis and I wouldn´t trade it until it breaks. If you like interest rate futures you should add to your watchlist. There is a strong support at 0.1550.


Conclusion


First of all, I hope you enjoy this article. The interest rates market is my favourite. You should consider the macroeconomic indicators and follow the central bank meetings. It’s a fundamental market and less volatile than other markets. There are strategies such as spreads and butterflies that are listed at the exchanges so you won’t have execution problems in the different legs. Thanks.
Have a good trading!



Disclaimer

I wrote this article myself, and it expresses my own opinions that shouldn't be used as a trading advice. Trading carries considerable risk due to the high leverage involved



#Trading #ECB #Euribor #Euro #EURUSD #fundamentals #InterestRates #Macroeconomics #opinion #Spread #trading #TechnicalAnalysis  #butterfly #creatingValue

Wednesday, 11 October 2017

FOMC, currencies review


As you know, today is the FOMC meeting minutes. This is one of the most important events if you trade fx, US government bonds or US indexes. And even if you don’t trade them, be aware, because the most part of assets will be moving later today.

Let´s start with the interest rate decision.  You can think that this decision doesn’t affect you in your day to day, but this is wrong. It affects to rate that the borrowers need to pay back (mortgages, personal loans, student loans, car financing…), your investments, the asset valuation, the money flow
.
Second, all the economic performance and events that affect the economy are reviewed by the FOMC committee and president of the Fed makes public the economic policy that will be implemented in the coming months.


These are simple explanations to clarify why it’s an important event in the financial markets. If you know how to interpret the words of the FED president, you can make good medium-term investments. For example: if the FED raises the interest rate and they expect the economy to keep growing, one of the most successful strategies is investing in financials (banks, insurance companies…) This is not the purpose of this post.

Euro
    Source: TradingView, EURUSD Dec17 futures, daily

This contract was analyzed the other day. It broke the first resistance at 1.18020. The bullish move in the euro is due to the strong German Industrial Production and the deferral of the independence declaration in Catalonia.  If the Fed sends a bullish speech, we can see this contract going down to around 1.1750.
These are the levels  I published in the weekend:

Resistance 3
1.20965
Resistance 2
1.19550
Resistance 1
1.18020
Support 1
1.17235
Support 2
1.15460
Support 3
1.14435


GBP

    Source: TradingView, GBPUSD Dec17 futures, daily

The British Pound has recovered a little bit this week. If we see the news around the UK, we can think that the pound is really high and it should fall. Europe is putting pressure on the UK. There is a substantial probability of a Non-deal Brexit, which would be bad for the GBP. In the other side, we have a strong US economy. I think Yellen will clarify the effects of the hurricanes to the US growth. I think we can see the GBPUSD between 1.3100 and 1.3066 in the coming days.
Important levels:

Resistance 3
1.3615
Resistance 2
1.3283
Resistance 1
1.3153
Support 1
1.3066
Support 2
1.2952
Support 3
1.2848



JPY

    Source: TradingView, JPYUSD Dec17 futures, daily


We can see a bullish trend in the dollar. The shade highlighted in the chart show how significant is the 1.1257 level. I don´t see strength in the JPY movement this week.  A hawkish message can help to consolidate the price between 1.1343 and 1.1257 (0.88160 and 0.88160 in the chart). 

Resistance 2
0.88160
1.1343
Resistance 1
0.88835
1.1257
Support 1
0.89905
1.1123
Support 2
0.90945
1.0996
Support 3
0.92225
1.0843


Trading the FOMC meeting minutes is really difficult. You shouldn´t only consider the interest rate decision. The FOMC minutes can provide you an idea of the path to follow in the coming months. If you do intraday trading, you will see the liquidity disappear and big swings in the prices due to how the traders or algos interpret the message provided by the Fed president.

Have a good trading!




Disclaimer

I wrote this article myself, and it expresses my own opinions that shouldn't be used as a trading advice. Trading carries considerable risk due to the high leverages involved

Tuesday, 10 October 2017

Dax, unstoppable

We have one of the longest bull market ever. The stock market index is peaking and some of the indexes are breaking historical maximums. Is this related to the improvement in the economy? Well, it’s true that the economies, in general, have improved but it has been a supported move by the central banks. I’d like to know what can happen if the central banks retire the stimulus and the consumption doesn’t improve. Anyway, this is not important at the moment but I like questioning myself at least to be prepared.
This is the YTD change of some of the biggest indexes around the world:

Index
YTD change (%)
Close
S&P 500
13.66%
2544.73
Dow Jones
15.17%
22761.07
Nasdaq
22.23%
6579.73
Eurostoxx
11.35%
7247.63
DAX
13.02%
12976.4
Nikkei
8.25%
20823.51
MSCI Emerging Markets
29.09%
493.84
Own elaboration


As you can see,  buying and holding in the beginning of 2017 would be a great decision. Are the markets raising because everyone is investing in Exchange Traded Funds(ETF)?


Dax

    Source: TradingView, Dax index futures, daily


We can see a strong bullish trend from the beginning of the year until the middle of Jun, where it retraced a little bit. It has been rising almost every day since the beginning of September. It tested two times the 200 EMA (exponential moving average) but it failed to close two times under this indicator. The most important levels are the following:

Support 1
12799.5
Support 2
12278.0
Support 3
11912.5
Support 4
11465.5


   Source: TradingView, Dax index futures vs EURUSD futures, daily

Germany’s economy is based on exports, this is why they get the advantage of a cheap Euro related to other currencies. You can see this relationship above. When the euro became expensive the Dax got stuck for a while. The buyers came to the market after the German election result lifting the Dax in the last weeks.

These are only a couple of insights, some of them are not valid for day trading but I like to have a picture of the fundamentals (as well as the technicals).  I hope it helps. I don’t know when the market is going to stop rising. There are some risk in the current economic cycle such: the rise in the protectionism and populism, a massive build-up of debt, the change of economic policy in central banks (tapering and the way to increase interest rates without affecting too much the borrowers), the high price of assets. I hope it helps.
Have a good trading!



Disclaimer

I wrote this article myself, and it expresses my own opinions that shouldn't be used as a trading advice. Trading carries considerable risk due to the high leverages involved

Sunday, 8 October 2017

Technical Analysis of EURUSD, GBPUSD, USDJPY

Let’s check the most important levels of the main currencies. We have seen a strong dollar during the last two weeks.

Euro

    Source: TradingView, EURUSD Dec 17 Futures

We can see that the dollar has been rising in the last sessions. The US macroeconomic data is strong and the FED officials confirmed that they will keep raising the interest rates and they will start to taper the buying of government bonds and other assets to support the economy. On the other hand, we have Europe, which has improved a lot since last year. The weakest leg is that European inflation is not increasing as the BCE would like. I can see a strong resistance around 1.17235. We can see the shade created on the Friday´s candle. If it fails to break this support, it will look for the first resistance at 1.18020. These are the levels I consider important:

Resistance 3
1.20965
Resistance 2
1.19550
Resistance 1
1.18020
Support 1
1.17235
Support 2
1.15460
Support 3
1.14435


GBP

    Source: TradingView, GBPUSD Dec 17 Futures

The British Pound has suffered a big fall since the double top in the middle of September. As I comment before it has been driven by the strong US macroeconomic figures. I´d like to add that Kevin Warsh popularity is soaring a he can become the next FED president. Considering him as a hawkish, his election will boost the USD. The UK is negotiating the Brexit with Europe, this can add uncertainty to the GBP. This contract has broken the 20 and 50 EMA and it’s near the 200 EMA. Maybe this is not relevant for trading but it´s one of the things that the people look at. These are the levels I’m looking:

Resistance 3
1.3615
Resistance 2
1.3283
Resistance 1
1.3153
Support 1
1.3066
Support 2
1.2952
Support 3
1.2848


JPY

   Source: TradingView, JPYUSD Dec 17 Futures

This is one of my favourite currency pairs. It moves really well according to fundamentals and technical levels. I expect that the USD will raise vs the JPY. It´s above the exponential moving averages and fundamentally is strong.  I would be surprised if the price goes back to  1.12 and then looks for the 1.1340s level.
I´ve quoted this contract in JPYUSD instead of USDJPY, this is why I’ve included two columns with prices:

Resistance 2
0.88160
1.1343
Resistance 1
0.88835
1.1257
Support 1
0.89905
1.1123
Support 2
0.90945
1.0996
Support 3
0.92225
1.0843

Have a good trading.

Disclaimer

I wrote this article myself, and it expresses my own opinions that shouldn't be used as a trading advice. Trading carries considerable risk due to the high leverages involved

8th day small profit that helps me to keep going in the competition

After a successful week and most importantly from recovering almost $6k, I wanted to consolidate my positive results. My desire was to b...