Okay, it's working.I have Oanda running a single FXTrade window while I'm open in another browser typing this blog post.Here is what I did to get this working:Close down extra charts -- only the basic platform window is running.Eliminate extra currency pairs -- only follow two or three active pairsShrink the window -- show everything but in as small a footprint as it practical.With these steps I

I recently bought the Dell Mini 12 thinking it would be noiseless, so that I could leave it on overnight while I slept. I tend to wake up from time to time so that would be an easy way to check for Forex opportunities during the night.Unfortunately, running the Oanda FxTrade application causes the system to grind to a halt. Right now my profile automatically opens multiple charts (1 min, 15 min

Well, I spent last evening tracking down some problems in my next foray into programming expert advisers.It turns our that a simple logical test was using an '&' instead of an '&&' between two terms.This little horseshoe nail caused some position closing attempts to fail with an error 138 -- meaning that the price being used to close the position was too far away from the market price.I also ran

Yesterday's experiments with creating an expert advisor to scalp the 5 minute chart show great profits and great risk.I've been working to reduce the level of risk without taking away the reasonable chance of making reasonable profits.Here is the most recent chart:This is running from 01-Feb-2009 to 25-Apr-2009 and obviously surviving any ups and downs during that period.I'm still not happy with

Well, it's the weekend, what else is a grown man to do?I had an inspiration for an (overly) aggressive expert advisor today. Basically, it's a simple buy low and sell high machine using oscillators.Scope out the chart. It does fairly well for a period of time and then when the market finds it's achilles heel it is undone.All is not lost. I have some ideas for improving the aggression factor as

The cable, as the GBPUSD is called, looks like drunken sailor.The chart is all over the map, with massive daily swings lined up one after the other all over the place.There are some pips to be made in there!I'm not generally trading the GBPUSD, but I'm going to put a few moments into figuring out whether my AUDJPY chart set up seems applicable.It's hard to resist all that volatility.

The market has about 6 minutes to change it's mind.If it doesn't, this is going to look like a tweezer top on the 1 hour.Now, that would be something I'd consider bearish (I originally typed bullish).If you read my last post... you know I'd like that to happen!Now about 4 minutes left.Zzzz. No market reaction on the hour.Maybe the tails weren't long enough -- or I'm too impatient?... continuing .

It might be time to think about shorting the AUDJPY.It's coming up to a recent high and might not have a lot of legs left.If we get a decent failure there could be a shorting opportunity for some part of this evening.See (on the 1 hour)?Let's keep an eye on this...... continuing ...Down on the 1 minute chart we seem to have some resistance to get through before we have the ability to drop:...

Well, first, I can't believe I'm awake this early after such a long night. I need to hone my craft and trade for a living -- I'd be able to keep better hours.Anyway, this morning we have the follow up to last nights analysis.We're looking at what appears to be a double bottom with no idea whether or not we'll reap the technical rewards that they can offer.Since I slept through the last several

Well, I should be sleeping, but since I'm not I thought I'd take another look at the charts.Guess what -- it's the same chart but I see something new!Okay, sure, a bit more time has passed. However, with the added points I clearly see that we seem to be consolidating.There should be some money to be made while we bounce around... and then some money to be made when a direction is chosen.As ever,

My last blog post, audjpy decision point, talked about an upcoming decision point. At the moment it looks like we are going to begin an upward leg.I'm feeling particularly cautious at the moment, especially since this is only on the 15 minute chart, but I thought I'd post it.Notice the last candlestick:As I'm long term bullish on AUDJPY let's hope this is the beginning, or perhaps resumption, of

I'm looking at the 3HR chart at the moment. We seem to be looking at an impending strike on a recent support line.If this resistance holds we might have a technical setup that would allow for a nice gain.Take a look:See how there was something of a W shape starting in the middle of the 19th? See how the chart is currently on the second touch down of a second W? If we bounce off the support line

I often think that evening trading goes through a period of doldrums. It gets boring. Things move slowly, if at all. Ten pips gain or loss can take an hour or more to happen.Zzzz.At the moment, as you can see by the chart below, I'm waiting for the current trendlet to break:This is a 1MIN chart, hence the "trendlet" concept.

After the downward move, see the last post, we are now poised to either bounce off the previous low or sink down.In other words, either result provides opportunity.Here's another snap of the 1MIN showing the AUDJPY bouncing just above the recent low of 68.06 (as shown by the yellow support lines drawn under the candlesticks).Take a look, make your call, set a good stop if you know how......

I was watching the AUDJPY as it slid downward today.As you might expect it was following a nice trend on the way down. It's currently following a nice trend line on the way up too.Here's a 1MIN chart showing the upward movement from the 68.06 bounce.I don't really place a lot of stock (heh, bad pun) in the 1MIN but it's interesting nonetheless.... continuing ...This is getting more interesting:A

Well, did anyone notice what happened based on the forex analysis I posted over the weekend.The EURUSD, posted here, indeed moved upwards a bit before resuming it's downtrend.The AUDJPY, posted here, with a followup here, broke it's support line and henceforth fell like a stone.Nice. While I obviously am not able to say which way it will go in advance, it seems I was able to pinpoint the action

Though I'm a bit leery of Sunday price action it looks like a fairly long term support line is being broken.This could be interesting.... continuing ...Looking closer, this may not yet be a break, as there have been previous "breaks" which gives us a bit of leeway here. A redraw based on a previous "break" leaves a bit of breathing room still.... continuing ...Waking up at 5:30am I see that

If you've been following along you'll notice that I keep mentioning that I am long term bullish on the AUDJPY.One of the reasons is that I think we've seen the worst of the panic and risk aversion. Another reason is that I think we're now closer to a recovery and following period of economic expansion than a lot of people expect.Given these two thoughts, and the following chart, it's easy to see

I don't generally trade the EURUSD but since it's the weekend I seem to have some extra time on my hands.Here are a series of charts, in varying timeframes, that I'd use to get a general feel for this currency pair.First, let's look at the 1D chart to see what's happened over the long term. I've compressed the chart a fair amount in order to get it to fit into a single snapshot -- you should be

I don't really have anything new to add since Forex markets are closed for the weekend.We are still constrained within what appears to be a consolidation pattern. We are approaching the end of the pattern and the bollinger bands on my 1hr chart are collapsing.I've also got a nifty new screen snipping tool that I wanted to try out... ;)While I do remain long term bullish there is a lot of noise

The range of price movements has been shrinking.Or, as generally considered from a technical analysis point of view, the bollinger bands are collapsing.Your guess is as good as mine as to the direction it will go, but usually when the bollinger bands collapse the currency will have completed it's consolidation and start a reasonable move up or down.Given that it's a Friday I'd have to say be

Well, we didn't really do much at all yesterday after bouncing off of a support line a couple of times.What does this mean?This means that the AUDJPY currency pair isn't currently behaving in a way that makes it easy to interpret. This means that we need to be careful.I have no idea what the market will do... except that it will either go up or down at some point.

Finally, after suggesting all day long that I'm looking for upward movement it's finally here.How long will it last? Who knows. Will it hit the top of my so-called consolidation zone? Don't know.Anyway, here's the latest from my chart...I'll be happiest if the pair zooms up like a rocket, but I'll lock in some profit if we get close to the resistance line.

I didn't have time to post another update during the day, but things have been pretty slow anyway.Here you can see that the AUDJPY has not yet broken out of the trend lines (that I have shown in early charts).I'm not sure what is going to happen during the Asian session, but as ever, I'm hoping for some bullish action.I'm sure you can see the market honoring the trend line by bouncing off it?

I'm sitting here watching the slow, achingly slow, decline in the AUDJPY.Based on RSI and stochastic evidence, not shown on the image below, it's very possible that we'll get an upturn soon.Anyway, this image shows you that we are continuing to approach what I've called a containment field. It represents a possible consolidation zone while the market tries to figure out whether to ultimately

It looks like we are going to test the containment of the possible AUDJPY consolidation zone I mentioned previously.Frankly, I had expected the market to hold up better to the news concerning jobs and housing, but then, if I could accurately predict what would happen I wouldn't be speculating would I?In any case, if we get an upward bounce around 70.75 - 70.85 then we are still in what I consider

It's likely, with the bad jobs and housing starts news this morning, that risk aversion will come into play.Basically, the AUDJPY is a good indicator of fear in the markets these days.With all that said, I'm still going to watch closely for a bounce of the potential support line. That is likely to be the point that the market decides to rally or collapse for the day.... continuing ... I don't

It's nearly 9:00am EST and we didn't drop low enough to get a real double bottom. We may have begun a consolidation process between 73.50 and 70.25 while the market figures out whether the next move is up or down.We'll have to see whether we continue to have lower highs and higher lows.If we are consolidating, then it's not hard to spot the support and resistance lines that will be likely to

I've been having some success calling the shots on the AUDJPY charts.This morning we've been having a correction from yesterday's highs. While I've been hearing scuttlebutt on twitter concerning shorting the carry trades, I remain upward biased.My view, the current drop in price is setting us up for a possible double bottom or simply a W shaped chart. Simultaneously, I do see some stochastic and

Sweet. I've got a support line around ~70.60 that is approximately where the market bounced back into upward movement.If you follow my ramblings on Twitter you'll see me making noises about a rebound in the works... and it came about while I was asleep.It's a very good feeling to have the market respect your charts and signals. Too bad it doesn't happen all that often.No time to look into

Today we see the crux of the issue.The AUDJPY has suffered a pullback. A return to recent highs gives us the possibility of a double top. A bounce off the recent low gives us the possibility of the a double bottom. There may be more complex structures at play as well, but you get the idea.This is risk point. This is an opportunity point.If you get in, say with a long position right now, you

It was a good day to be long AUDJPY.We're in a bit of a pullback right now. Obviously, this is either a great time to get in or it's the start of a downturn.That's how it works!I'm willing to take a nibble...

At the moment things are looking bullish for the AUDJPY.I popped in another small position a few moments ago and so far it's been north from there. If things turn around I'll wait for a good low and then play the game where I replace higher longs with lower longs.Obviously, though I don't expect another huge currency collapse, I'll still have to play it cautiously. You never can tell what might

As I mentioned a couple of days ago, I have been working on sinking some smaller positions while the AUDJPY was going sideways (or suffering a slow decline).Today is the day that this bears fruit. Trading lower positions for higher positions now has me with some sunk positions that I can unload at a decent profit as the AUDJPY continues to spike.

A few days ago I was saying that perhaps the AUDJPY would pull back after it's very fast rise up into the 71.xx range.It continued rising to somewhere around 72.80 instead. However, early last night it was bumping down around the 70.00 mark. Was that my correction?My three hour (I trade with Oanda) shows leg room all the way to 68.xx if it's thinking about correcting.That's the trick with Forex

So, it looks like we've had several days of sideways motion on the charts. I don't mind at all.As long as you buy on the low end and sell on the high end these are good times to play in the market too.For periods of non-trending action I like to watch the stochastic and RSI indicators. The stochastic are reasonable but they do give a ton of false signals. The RSI can help corroborate their

The MetaTrader 4 is possibly the most recognized and efficient home broker trading application nowadays on the market. It is free and available for download from the MetaQuotes Software Corporation website, the producer of MetaTrader 4. If your broker offers the possibility of having MT4 as your main trading platform, it will be likely to provide a download link directly when you sign up for your trading account. Even if many brokers have their own platforms, MT4 it is still a powerful and reliable tool for Forex, stock, and commodity traders. If your broker doesn’t support MT4, you can freely access real data from several servers on MT4, the currency pair rates differ a bit from MT4 servers and your broker, but it is not something that will significantly affect your trading performance.

Once you have successfully downloaded and installed the MT4 software, launch it. It may seem a bit complex for beginners, but all the information is very clear and divided by windows that allow you to control all your orders and a different number of pairs simultaneously. From the Market Watch feature, normally positioned on the top left size, under the menu bar, you have all the pairs available on the server, and with a click and drag mouse movement you can make that pair to appear in any of your chart windows, making it easier and faster to switch from one pair to another, and you, as trader, know how decisive can time be, when you have more than one order opened, mainly during news and market events.

One of the best features that MT4 offers is the option to create templates that fit better each and every trader needs. The profiles can have one or multiple charts. For example, 3 EUR/USD charts with different timeframes, or 3 different pair charts, in which you can totally customize them using the indicators of your choice. From colors to templates, the MetaTrader 4 offers the trader full interaction with his orders, which is often not possible in many broker platforms.

The main disadvantage that MT4 has against other web-based trading platforms is the fact that you have to download it. Many traders have to often check their orders from different places, such as: office or university. So if your broker only offers the MT4 or other downloadable software, it can be quite complicated for you to manage your orders, if you fall into this category. The optimal situation would be the possibility of using MT4 while you are on your computer, and at the same time, the option to open or close orders through your browser, in situations where aren’t using your computer.

Finally MetaTrader 4 is, doubtlessly, a tool that every Forex trader should at least download and be familiar with, in most of the cases, you will make it part of your trading experience, considering its features, for the moment, MT4 has a wide superiority against other trading software.

Though I had expected a downturn before the pop... the long flat period today in the 71.xx range clued me in to a possible spike.When the 15 min bollinger bands tightened up and the price popped above it, the clinch was in.I hopped on with a couple tiny positions, nearly instantly protected by stop losses, and grabbed a few pips on the spike.Now the question is, will the uptrend continue or will

Did you ride the recent run in the AUDJPY to 71?I was lucky enough to grab and hold a chunk at 65.62 and I'm pondering whether or not I want to let it go.We've just had a double top on the 15 minute chart. The 1 hour is oversold. I think we are going to get some bounces upward due to exuberance, but it seems about time for a pullback.I've sold off the nibbles I also acquired on the way up. I