Day Traded Financial Instruments – Currencies
The debt ceiling debacle and government shutdown have affected our normal trading operations in several ways. I’ve been a stock index trader since the early 1990’s when I began working and trading at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. The news cycle lasted at least 24 hours before newspapers and television morning shows would revise or alter the political landscape and issues of the day that may affect market behavior. Furthermore, the U.S. financial markets closed for business at 4:15pm and didn’t re-open until the following morning. This forced all of the market participants into a, “time out.” Finally, this allowed the markets’ participants to digest the day’s events and adjust their trading plans accordingly.
Fast forward to 2013 and the news cycle is delivered 140 characters at a time by anyone who thinks they may have something newsworthy to say. This all noise, no signal news environment is then transmitted via every conceivable electronic gadget, TV, and satellite radio to completely overwhelm the markets’ participants.
Fortunately, we live in a world where everyone is entitled to anything they want. The sellers of, “want” support this by providing access to the markets nearly 24 hours a day. Furthermore, the same sellers of access to open markets, the brokerage houses and government regulators have decided that 24 hours a day isn’t enough. We’ll stay open on several bank holidays as well. Our clients won’t be able to transfer funds if they get in trouble but the odds are, it won’t be our margin call and the commissions will cover any punitive damages if there’s a joint action against the brokerage industry.
The previous sarcasm is securely based in the trading world in which I exist. There are times when the only truth in the market is the market’s last traded price. This is where the rubber meets the road and the best bids meets the best offer, the contract is sealed. The noise can be tuned out. The TV can be turned off. The strategy shifts from big picture investing and turns to technical analysis and day trading. Based on my experience, the exchange traded currency markets can be the best option due to their volume, contract size and responsiveness to technical analysis.
Successful day trading in any market requires the proper degree of volatility and contract size. These are the determining factors of whether a given market has enough Dollar based movement to be profitable. The simplest method of figuring this out is to multiply the average daily trading range over the last several days by the tick value in the market you’ve selected. The Euro Currency has an average daily range of about $.0077. That doesn’t sound like much but the Euro Currency has an exchange listed contract value of $125,000. Therefore, the average movement is $.0077 X $125,000, which is an average daily dollar movement of $962.50. Another way of looking at it is that the Euro has a tick value of $12.50 and has an average range of 77 ticks.
We’ve determined that the market has enough movement and a large enough contract size to provide opportunity to profit from its daily movement. The next step is to determine if the market has sufficient liquidity to handle our trade size without losing too much in slippage. Continuing with the Euro Currency as an example we can look at the depth of the market on nearly any popular trading platform. Market depth provides us with a live look at the number of contracts attempting to be bought or sold near the market’s current price. The Euro is currently trading around 1.35 to the Dollar. There are 50 buyers at 1.3499 and 32 sellers at 1.3500. Moving a few ticks up or down shows that there are hundreds of contracts waiting to be bought and sold within a couple of ticks of the last traded price. This is clearly enough volume to handle a day trader’s volume efficiently.
Finally, we come to technical analysis. One of the beautiful things about the currency markets is the global trade that they represent. Rarely do we see the currency swings or volatility like we see in the S&P 500. The S&P 500 futures have had 30 days in 2013 where the market moved more than 1% compared to 11 days in the Euro with a 1% move or more. Market movement is important in determining potential profits but, volatility based on news events that change throughout the day will most likely lead to more protective stops being hit as well as more false breakouts in pattern recognition and the corresponding failure of the setup.
Day trading the currency markets like the euro can be a more stable way to grind out profits when the news cycles have turned the stock indices into a yo-yo. The added depth of the currency markets as they relate to global trade brings international conglomerates to the marketplace when the swings get out of hand.
A large portion of my trading, whether day trading or, position trading is focused on following the what the major players are doing and attempting to align myself with their viewpoints. The government shutdown has halted the Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s weekly Commitment of Traders report, which allows me to track what the commercial traders are doing in all of the markets I trade. In its absence, I find the added depth and global viewpoint of the currency market’s participants a good proxy. Therefore, I will shorten my horizons until better opportunities present themselves and I’m once again provided with signal rather than noise.