10 Percent Profit on UK GDP Contraction

UK GDP (A) Contracted 1.5 percent, a little more than estimates. I made 10 percent profit with selling gbpusd three times before the GDP announcement. Pound was under pressure from the start of the week and I was asking myself that to what degree the negative news were priced.


1 - Opening the first position

2 - Opening the second position (with a conservative stop loss)

3 - One position automatically closed with 147 pips profit

4 - I closed the other with 124 pips profit

5 - Another position opened latter

6 - I closed it just minutes before the announcement with 105 pips profit

7 - End of the day

8 - GBPUSD in week

Profit from Rising Unemployment in Britain

Ahead of UK GDP, I made 107 pips profit by selling gbpusd betting on the pressure from the UK unemployment report on the sterling. I had also an order at 1.4030 for the time I was asleep but it never triggered as the price didn't go beyond 1.4019.

OPEC Extraordinary Meeting: Missing Signals in a Noisy Environment

OPEC's members gathered in Vienna on Friday to cut production level concerning about oil prices, which has fallen more than 50 percent from its July 147 $/b to about 63 $/b in the last week. However, I was probably wrong for giving it too much weight in my daily assessment.

They finally announced a 1.5 Mb/day cut, when it was almost clear that there would be no cut more than 2 Mb/day and nobody expected to see any significant reaction to such a small cut. In fact, I was too concerned about the possibility of a temporary rally in oil, which didn’t happened at all, and its consequences on the dollar.

I think it worked as a noise, making it difficult to discover signals in the market that otherwise might be very clear. Specifically, and in combination with other factors such as being personally tired, an opportunity was missed for selling sterling at a very cheap price ahead of the U.K. GDP report (see the chart).

However, I made money that night betting on the positive reaction from the Canadian dollar, and I was completely true in closing the position (long on CADJPY) on perception of fading technical signals.