Lesson 3 A Sample Trade - Initial Changes, 4 Hours Later

3.1 Setting Up An Example

3.2 Opening Positions

3.3 Initial Changes

3.4 The Next Day

3.5 Candles Paint - A Story

3.6 Retraction from a Big Move

3.7 Two Days Later

3.3 Initial Changes, 4 Hours Later

We will now explore one of our trades, the USD/JPY, several hours after we opened it.

Our USD/JPY position gained! Our short term prediction proved to be correct. We see the price of the Dollar bounce back after its steep fall. Our initial thoughts, that the Dollar's strength from the last couple of days will continue, plays out on the chart.

USD/JPY - October 24th, 2006 - 6:00 PM USD/JPY Example 3

This graph shows that a succession of blue candles, which indicate positive gains for our position, has been interrupted by a first red candle. At this stage our position is up 11 pips.

A couple of candles later...

USD/JPY - October 24th, 2006 - 8:00 PM USD/JPY Example 4

A couple of hours later, the short term uptrend seems to have stalled. There is some back and forth between the pair's bears and bulls. Our position has moved a couple of pips higher to positive 14 pips.

Close the Position?: Since our position is positive and our initial prediction was correct this could be a good place to think about closing the position with a gain. The decision when to close a position depends on your broader strategy. That strategy depends on how conservative or aggressive your trading style is. For a short term objective (intra-day) we may have accomplished our goal ($100 gain on the trade).

During this same time our EUR/USD was falling by about the same amount, but we will show both pairs on the next page after one full day.

Lets now continue onto the next day.