Truth in a simpler way of trading (by Henry Liu):
One of the biggest mistakes in Forex trading is ironically spending way too much time trading. There is absolutely no one who could predict with certainty where the market is going to do next, and by spending too much time trading, your chances of getting in a losing trade increases, not mentioning the stress associated with trading, which may very well lead to a lapse in your trading decision.
My ideal way of Forex trading is knowing ahead when the market is going to move, get in the market during that window of opportunity, enter a trade, and then cash out once in decent profit. Rinse and repeat while spending usually no more than a couple of hours a trade, and no more than 4 to 5 trades a week.
The only system that fits this bill is Forex News Trading. Let’s examine some of the benefits in news trading:
1. Scheduled Trading Time: You trade only the high impact news during their scheduled release time, which are available through various news calendars up to few weeks ahead of time, and you are in the market during a time where volatility is almost insured, with ample liquidity, so you don’t waste your time or your money chasing the noises or fake trends during low liquidity hours.
2. Reduce Losses: Trading Forex is about having the odds stacked with you, not against you! By limiting the amount of trades you take in a month, you are cutting down your potential losses while picking the crème of the crop.
3. Managed Risk: News trading generally gives you a manageable risk. You can always put your stop order at pre-release level, because it is a golden rule that once the market travels back to the point before the news release, then the effect of the news is presumably over…
4. High Profit: Since the market is likely to overreact to news releases, volatility becomes our friend. By getting in the right direction after the release, you can cash out on most of the movements.
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5. Less Time Trading: There are only about 35 tradable news releases a month, and out of these 35 releases, you’ll probably get 50% giving you a tradable release figure. So the tradable ones could take up to 2 hours per trade, but the untradeable ones should only take 15 minutes of your time. Therefore, you are averaging less than 40 hours of trading a month, or about 10 hours a week. While making probably the same amount of money you’d be making trading 16 hours a day.
At the end of the day, it is not about the amount of time you spend trading, or if you used technical analysis or fundamental analysis. It is about what’s left in your account. By concentrating only on news trading, you are looking at the simplest way and probably the most profitable way that I know of, in Forex trading.
Henry Liu May 2010
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Legal Notice(s) and Requirement(s):
RISK DISCLAIMER: Trading the foreign exchange on margin carries a high level of risk, and may not be suitable for all investors. Before deciding to trade the foreign exchange, you should carefully consider your investment objectives, level of experience, and risk appetite. Past performances are not indicative of future results, which can vary due to market volatility. The possibility exists that you could sustain a loss of some or all of your initial investment and therefore you should not invest money that you cannot afford to lose. You should be aware of all the risks associated with foreign exchange trading, and seek advice from an independent financial advisor if you have any doubts.
COPYRIGHT AND OTHER RELEVANT DISCLAIMERS: This E-Book and its contents are copyrighted property of Henry Liu. Any copying or redistribution of this E-book, in whole or in part, without express written permission from Henry Liu, is strictly prohibited and violation of this copyright. Any websites, resources, and products mentioned in this e-book belong to their respective owners.
Legal Disclaimer: While all attempts have been made to verify information provided in this E-book, neither the Author(s) nor the Publisher assume any responsibility for errors, omissions, or contrary interpretation of the subject matter herein. This E-book is not intended for use as a source of legal or accounting advice. The Author(s) and Publisher want to stress that the information contained herein may be subject to varying state and/or local laws or regulations. All users are advised to retain competent counsel to determine what state and/or local laws or regulations may apply to the user’s particular business. The purchaser or reader of this publication assumes the responsibility for the use of these materials and information and/or its application. Adherence to all applicable laws and regulations, federal, state, and local, governing professional licensing, business practices, advertising, and all other aspects of doing business in the United States or any jurisdiction is the sole responsibility of the purchaser or reader. The Author(s) and Publisher assume no responsibility or liability whatsoever on the behalf of any purchaser or reader of these materials. Any perceived slights of specific people or organizations are unintentional.
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What Kind of News Do We Trade?
There are literally hundreds of financial news events released around the clock from all over the world. The key is to concentrate on news releases that have an immediate impact on the market. There are about 5 to 10 important news from U.S., and about 3~5 each from UK, EURO Zone, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand. These news releases are usually scheduled monthly or quarterly; they will repeat every month around the same day of the week or day of the month.
We only trade news releases that are currently considered as “hot”, meaning that the market is particularly interested in it. For example, a few years ago during the real estate boom, U.S. Housing Start, Existing Home Sales, and New Home Sales were constantly ignored and no one was paying attention to it. Why? Because at the time economy was doing good, home sales were always better than expected, and market just assumed the best and basically ignored the numbers. Look at the same news releases today in mid 2008, Housing news releases were particularly important because the economy is suffering, any signs of rebound from the housing sector signals improvement in the economy, as many market analysts pointed out; therefore, housing data is currently “hot”. Similarly, the weekly Jobless Claims just became “hot” recently because of former Fed. Chairman Greenspan talked about it in his book…
Other news releases such as consumer confidence, current account, and even the TIC Net Long-Term Securities are currently being ignored. But they will eventually become hot again, as many of these news releases and market focus work in cycles, just as the fashion industry.
The key to trading economic news successfully is to be selective with news releases to trade. As stated before, with hundreds of news released monthly, why risk with less important news releases and gamble your hard earned money when you can trade with news that have a higher probability of success? Therefore, I have compiled a list of news releases that have a high probability of success (at least 70%) backed by solid track record.
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Another important “hot” factor in today’s market is RISK. There are basically two different reactions to Risk, one being “Risk Aversion” and the other “Risk Appetite”.
Risk Aversion basically means to avoid risk. Market will react go with the safest route, selling high yielding currencies and buying low yielding currencies, such as BUYING CHF and JPY while SELLING GBP and AUD. Few instances recently of extreme market risk aversion, GBP/JPY pair have been documented losing up to 1000 pips in a 24 hour period.
This is an extreme example but not an isolated case, we have seen risk aversion taking over market sentiment and dropping USD/CHF, GBP/JPY, AUD/JPY 200 to 500 pips a day.
What kind of news sparks Risk Aversion? The answer: Any news that creates risk (or rumor of risk) in the market, for example:
1. Geopolitical uncertainty – Rumors of war or actual terrorist attack.
2. Subprime Mortgage Write-down – Bear Stearns, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, etc…
3. Major industry sector negative earning/forecast report. Such as AIG (insurance), Bank of America (finance), GM (Auto), etc…
4. Or any huge surprise in fundamental news that reminds the market of the condition our economy is currently in. Such as a worse than expected Housing Data, a worse than expected employment data or unemployment rate, etc…
What to do in a Risk Aversion situation? The best answer is to stay out of the market or take a short position!
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Risk Appetite means market willing to take on risk. What is considered risk? When the market is buying high-yielding currencies such as GBP, and selling low-yielding currencies, such as JPY, it is considered as Risk Appetite. Therefore, when carry trades (JPY based trades) are winding, or going up, it is a sign of Risk Appetite.
What kind of news sparks Risk Appetite? Basically any news that promotes:
1. Geo-Political Stability – Peace Treaty, peace talks, etc…
2. Good Earnings Report from major sectors.
3. Good Surprises in fundamental news, such as better than expected housing, employment, or economy data.
Risk Appetite is different from Risk Aversion whereas Risk Aversion will be followed with strength in both JPY and USD currencies, while Risk Appetite will not only promote carry trades, but all high-yielding currencies in general. Risk Appetite will likely to promote stable market condition and normal daily volatility.
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Special Definitive Guide Cheat Sheet Report
US Reports Tradable Trigger Movement Range
Core CPI m/m
0.20%
50 pips Retail Sales 0.50% 50 pips
Interest Rate
0.25%
70 pips Trade Balance 7.0B 40 pips
NonFarm Payroll
70K
70 pips ADP NFP Changes 50K 40 pips
ISM Manufacturing
2.5
70 pips New Home Sales 70K 70 pips
Existing Home Sales
400K
70 pips GDP q/q 0.30% 60 pips
Canada Reports Tradable Trigger Movement Range
Core CPI m/m
0.3%
50 pips Interest rate 0.25% 70 pips
Trade Balance
0.7B
40 pips Employment Change 30K 60 pips
IVEY PMI
3.0
50 pips GDP m/m 0.2% 50 pips
Core Retail sales
0.5%
50 pips
United Kingdom Reports Tradable Trigger Movement Range
CPI y/y
0.3%
50 pips Industrial Production 0.3 50 pips
Interest rate
0.25%
70 pips Manufacturing PMI 2.0 50 pips
Retail Sales
0.5%
60 pips MPC Vote (minutes) 2 Votes 50 pips
GDP q/q
0.3%
50 pips
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New Zealand Reports Tradable Trigger Movement Range
CPI q/q
0.3%
50 pips Interest rate 0.25% 70 pips
Retail Sales
0.5%
40 pips GDP q/q 0.3% 40 pips
Australia Reports Tradable Trigger Movement Range
Interest rate
0.25%
70 pips Employment Changes 27K 60 pips
GDP q/q
0.3%
50 pips Retail Sales 0.6% 50 pips
CPI q/q
0.3%
50 pips
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Basic Trading Methods
Let’s start by defining few important terms:
Forecasted (Consensus or Expected) Figure: This is usually derived from a survey done by financial news organizations such as Bloomberg, Reuters, etc… Usually they get a number of economists, anywhere from 20 to 240, and ask them what number they think it will be. After getting all of the numbers, the highest and the lowest are taken out with the rest averaged out to a single “averaged” figure. That is why with different news organizations will have a slightly different consensus number.
Deviation: is the difference between the actual release number and the forecasted number. Let’s say that CPI is expected to be 3.0% and the actual number came out as 3.3%; the deviation is then 0.3%.
Actual Figure: This is the actual release figure from the official source of the information.
Revision: This is the revised change done for previous release figure, usually the month before. It could sometime impact the market greatly if the revision is huge. Usually if we have a good deviation with a good revision number, the market will react even more.
Fundamental Trading In a Nutshell: Every major news release has a forecasted or consensus figure determined by economists beforehand. If the actual release figure is different from the consensus or forecasted (or expected) figure, the market is surprised and will react to the release immediately. The bigger the surprise, or deviation, will produce bigger reaction. Based on historical data, we can predict that a particular deviation will trigger a minimum amount of pips movement. If a news release consistently moves over 40 pips with a particular deviation, we expect that a similar deviation in the future will likely to cause the market to move 40 pips.
Although we have to be flexible in our trading, news trading requires that a specific plan to be followed with specific set of rules to protect our investment. It
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is particularly important that we only take a trade when our expected deviation is hit, not we get a close enough deviation.
For example, if you have promised your teenage son a car on his 18th birthday on the condition that he gets straight A’s in school this semester, and he came home with a couple of B’s, you wouldn’t have to give him a car. We must regard news trading with the same kind of discipline because sometimes almost still means no.
To further drive this point, consider that since the forecasted number is an average, many fund managers or banks might be expecting a slightly different number than you and I, and if we take a close enough deviation to trade, we might just be going in the opposite direction against some of these big fund managers.
For example, if the upcoming ISM Manufacturing Index has a forecasted number of 52.5, and our standard deviation is 3.0. The actual release came out as 50.3… what is our course of action? The actual deviation is 2.2, about 0.8 points away from our tradable deviation, but it’s close enough… so you enter a short trade. But Mr. Big Shot at ABC Hedge Fund may also be looking at release of 50.3, which still means expansion in the sector (above 50 means expansion, below 50 means contraction), and decided to go on a long trade. This could be devastating for your account. Remember, the deviations that we trade are “safe” deviations, they have been proven to work in the past and that is why we trade them.
It’s time to lay down some ground rules before getting into the actual trading methods. Remember that the following are extremely important and you should always keep in mind when trading the news, no matter what kind of news releases or how huge the deviations are.
1. It doesn’t matter whether or not the market reacts the way you expect it to react. You have to remember that nothing is absolute in trading, especially with Forex.
2. We do not form an opinion before the news release; we will wait for news release to come out, and then trade according to plan.
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3. We are only looking for the probability of the combined reaction of the market in the short term, within the first 30 minutes up to 2 hours immediately after the news release.
4. We must be flexible in trading. If market sentiment, technical analysis, and the news release numbers all point to one direction but the market still react in a completely opposite direction, we must also act accordingly. It is most likely that we’ve missed some underlying reason to this reaction, and we must respect the market.
5. We only concentrate on the news that has most impact to the market with most predictable reaction.
6. We always assume that the market will overreact to the news.
7. Study the reaction of the market after news release. You will see the “underlying market” sentiment.
Ok, it’s time to talk about the actual fundamental news trading methods. Remember to always prepare a plan by writing them down on a piece of paper; do not get into the market unprepared.
It is important that you get a news wire service, such as tradethenews.com if you want to trade fundamental news. Do not use those free news wire services or news feed from your broker. Every second counts in news trading, you could make up 10 times the money you pay for the news feed service with just one good trade.
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Fundamental Trading Methods
TRADE THE RETRACEMENT
We wait for the news release to come out. Based on the release number we will determine “where” to get into the market if our expected deviation is hit.
We will wait for the market to retrace back within 10~15 pips of the pre-release price level. Sometimes when we have a huge deviation, we can enter the market at 20~30 pips from the pre-release level, but it would be based on discretion. Market will usually retrace within the first 5~30 minutes, if a retracement is to take place.
A stop/loss will be placed at 35 pips or less from the entry price. Therefore, it is very important to wait for the market to come back because if we enter too soon, we might get stopped out.
This type of trading is much easier than trading the spike, but sometimes we might not get a retracement at all or big enough and miss this trade altogether.
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Weekly Outlook
I provide a weekly outlook where I analyze the fundamental trends. I strongly suggest that you to sign up and read my outlook to get a broader view of the market. I think you will also understand better some of the concepts that I talk about in this book once you see them being applied in real-life. This weekly outlook is valued at $49 per month.
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Sentiment Trading (Long Term Trading)
This is actually one of my favorite subjects, Sentiment Trading. Sentiment trading is basically trading with market sentiments. The concept is pretty simple, find out what the market sentiment is, and place a trade in the direction of market sentiment.
So, how can we find out what is the market sentiment? Well, look at this 4-hour chart below; can you spot a trend? That is pretty much your long-term market sentiment.
There are actually 2 types of market sentiment, one being long term sentiment and the other being short term. We cannot really take advantage of the long term sentiment as retail traders, because we don’t have the financial backing to sit through market volatility; however, short term sentiment is where we can make good money.
Short term sentiment is driven by fundamental news. If the market is expecting a better than forecasted news release, it will try to price in the outcome days before the actual news release. It is often called “Buy Rumor and Sell Fact”. For example, if the market is expecting ECB to raise interest rate next week, we will
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see EUR/USD going up few days, even a week before the actual ECB announcement, to price in the rate hike. During the actual interest rate announcement, where the market has already priced in the hike, might start to SELL EUR/USD and drive market lower as major players scramble to cover their original long orders and take profits.
So how can you benefit from this type of trading? Well, here are some basic rules for you to follow:
Always look ahead a few days and be aware of any upcoming major news releases such as interest rate announcements, CPI, GDP, Central Banker speeches, etc...
Pay attention to recent news announcements and watch market reaction. If a seemly negative news release is unable to move the market by much (or vice versa), then there must be a reason why.
Always keep in mind of the relationships between different news releases. Retail Sales to GDP, PPI to CPI, etc… If we get a much better than expected Retail Sales figure this week, market will tend to expect a better than expected GDP next week, therefore take advantage of this sentiment.
Watch the market closely the day before the major announcement. Preferably at the end of Tokyo session or earlier for European news releases, or at the end of London session for U.S./Canada news releases.
Place a trade in the direction of the market if you see a short term trend establishes, and make sure to close the trade before the actual news release. Market Sentiment has absolutely no effect on the actual result. If you can make anywhere from 40 pips to 100 pips per sentiment trade, it is good enough. There is no need to make the extra points from the news release. You can trade the retracement of the news release and take your profits.
Read market analysis by different economists. Read my weekly outlook and learn how to read the market.
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Not every major news release is sentiment tradable. If the market is confused, then sit it out. Only trade the market when you see a clear, established short term trade.
Once again, market will try to price in a high impact news release few sessions before the actual release. This price in market action is called short term Market Sentiment. For instance, if there is an overwhelming consensus that a certain central bank is going to cut rate, we should be looking at its currency at least a day before and try to “price in” our trade, just like most major players by selling it ahead of time.
Retail traders don’t see this simple fact. People just follow the market without asking why. As a herd, traders are not very perceptive. However, as individual traders, if we just keep an eye on future events, it is not hard to predict what the market is going to do one week ahead of time.
We have to understand that the market does not move based on Technical Analysis or just some moving averages crossing. If this is what Forex is all about, then we should have 95% of winners in the Forex Market. But I think the opposite is true. Most traders would rather choose the complicated method, although they don’t understand it, rather than choose an easy, simple method because they think that trading couldn’t be this easy… It is the same idea as if you raise the price on a certain item will add more perceived value to it, even though it is the same item.
So market sentiment is to understand market psychology. Traders overreact and over exaggerate trades. That is exactly what we are counting on.
How do we determine what kind of sentiment, bearish or bullish? There are actually 2 different ways.
Price Action: There is absolutely nothing better than simple price action. Look at how the market is trading prior to the high impact news scheduled next session or two. If you see market is buying USD, then it is safe to assume that the current
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short-term trend and market sentiment is USD bullish. We will be looking at support areas on a pull back to enter LONG USD.
Fundamental News Relationships: This requires that you understand how each news release is released with one another. I will try to list a few below, but I don’t think I can cover everything… but once you know what you are looking for, you will get used to these relationships:
Here is a list of news release relationships. Usually when the first news release is better than expected, expectations will start to build prior to the second news release for better than expectation figures. This will help you to identify the market trends and possibly enter on a sentiment trade.
a. PPI -> CPI: A high PPI will affect market sentiment towards a better CPI release.
b. Retail Sales -> GDP: Retail sales in emerging countries such as the US makes up about 2/3 of the market. If Retail Sale is good, then possibly we will see better GDP.
c. Unemployment, Jobless Claims, Unemployment rate -> Retail Sales: If people are losing jobs, they will not have money to spend at the retail levels, therefore affecting the GDP as a whole.
d. Housing Data -> Durable Goods: Especially in the U.S., a higher housing data will have a positive effect on durable goods because more people buy new houses equals to more people buying new appliances.
e. PMI -> GDP and General Economy: Purchasing Manager Index, such as UK Manufacturing PMI, U.S.’s ISM Manufacturing PMI, Canada’s IVEY PMI, all have an effect on the future GDP and the health of economy.
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f. ADP -> NFP: U.S. ADP has an impact on the expectation of NFP. But if we get an extremely out of norm reading, like NFP is expecting -50K and we get a +80K on ADP, then traders will probably just ignore this, thinking it is probably a mistake.
Just to give you an example… If the Retail Sales numbers for the past 3 months has been coming out better than expected in the U.S., then at the end of the quarter, one should expect to see higher GDP q/q release, as Retail Sales make up about 72% of the US GDP number. Therefore, few sessions or even a couple of days before the release of GDP, you should start to look for signs of stronger USD, and plan your entry for a sentiment trade in the direction of that expectation…
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SPECIAL RESOURCES SECTION
SPECIAL Announcement: I have created a standalone version of Strength Meter, it is downloadable from my website, and you don’t need to have Excel or the hassle of setting it up. Just make sure your MT4 has the DDE Server option enabled, and fire up the Newsprofiteer Meter, and voila, you are done!
In this section I am going to share with you some of the tools that I have been using in my daily trading. These are the tools that I find crucial and I cannot do without them. Some of these tools are freely available and some aren’t. I am not the creator of these tools and I give credits to the people who created them.
Here we go:
Strength Meter:
This special tool is made by Thomas Yeomans and friends, and you can see
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individual currency strength with just one glance. Exceptionally well designed spreadsheet using Microsoft Excel and MetaTrader 4.0 platform. You can get MetaTrader 4.0 from different brokers that use this platform, and then all you need to do is enable DDE Server from the options to link with the Excel sheet. If you can’t find a MetaTrader broker, use metaquotes.net
Obviously you must also have Microsoft Excel in order to use this tool. Almost everyone that has a Windows based PC have Microsoft excel.
I usually keep the signal meter in a reduced format on one of my monitors like below:
I can instantly see what currency is strong and what currency is weak. Let me show you how to set it up with MetaTrader then I will show you how to use this signal meter.
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Download MetaTrader
If you don’t have MetaTrader, go to http://www.metaquotes.net to download the latest MetaTrader platform.
However, if you download it from ODL Markets you will get stock market charts such as: UK FTSE, German DAX, French CAC, Gold, Silver, Crude Index, etc… http://www.odlmarkets.com/metaquotes_metatrader4_demo.html
Complete form and click on ‘Sign Up’ button to register for a demo account.
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Once registered, you will receive an email with the download link.
Click on ‘Run’ to initiate process.
Once you have downloaded and installed the platform, you will be asked to open up an account if you have never opened an account before. This is done directly from the platform. You will see the following window.
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