The Impact of News Events, Part 2

As we mentioned in Part 1, fundamental news tends to adjust the technicals and these adjustments translates into potential trading opportunities on the Forex market. Give these facts it is important we use both fundamental and technical analysis in our approach to trading currencies.

Fundamentals tend to be very inconsistent. This is why most traders, including myself, focus on the technicals. Fundamentals focus on the structural issues of currencies, such as flows of money and tend to be cyclical. Certain fundamental data carry different weight for different currencies. You will hear terms such as balance of trade, capital flows, employment and industrial production.

What does it all mean?

I have no clue. I am not an economist and I will never ever pretend to be (even with my fascination of the Central Bank role in the currency markets). In the end price action matters! How the currency price reacts to the news is the key. For example, EUR/USD pair is trending down and unexpected economic number that is dollar negative is released. The pair is likely to spike up and over a period of time resumes its previous downward technical direction.

It is all about using technical analysis to assess the likely direction of price and supporting it all with fundamental data. It is entirely possible to have two technical indicators and use fundamental data as a 3rd confirmation.

So how do we incorporate this into our currency trading plan?

Know the news and its anticipated impact on the currency pair. In my previous blog posting I provided some links to the two sites I use to monitor economic releases. If you reviewed the site you would have picked up on the fact that some news events are given a greater weight than others. I trade the London-New York overlap session, so the 8:30 am releases (and Fed news) catches my attention, but I will also get up a little earlier if significant news out of the ECB or Bank of England is expected. I tend not to have any short term position on or if I do I may close attention to my stop-loss. I let the market set the trend and enter the market when the “whip-saw” action has settle down and the market sediment for the news and trend has been established.

Be patient and be discipline! Always understand the big picture!

Happy Trading!!



For more information on how I trade visit http://www.squidoo.com/forexjourney. Feel free to email this lens to your friends!!