Tag: trading

Active Equity/Commodity Portfolio: Annual Report

Happy New Year! I have no resolutions since every day is like a new year for me.

In 2017, I focused more on active equity/commodity portfolio than the other portfolios as I finally was able to trade free of commissions, found more opportunities there and had money saved up from off-book jobs.

WHAT A BORING YEAR…for the stock market. Sometimes, boring is good. S&P 500 was up 21.64%.

Figure 1: S&P 500 Annual Return (Includes Dividends).
Source: Aswath Damodaran, NYU Stern

The geometric average return since the financial crisis is 8.42% (2008-2017). Geometric average better reflects the returns over time since there’s always volatility in the market and volatility lower investment returns.

Since inception (November 2016), active equity/commodity portfolio is up 15.74%. For 2017, the portfolio returned 11.86%, way way below the market. No wonder active managers are not anyone’s favorites at this time.

Figure 2: Active Equity/Commodity Portfolio (Robinhood) P/L since inception (Nov. 2016).
The white line represents the start of the year.

I will address the significant drawdown you see in figure 2 at the bottom of this post.

The biggest gain of the year, both in a percentage and nominal terms, came from the first trade in 2017. The trade was long NUGT (3x leveraged gold ETF). I believed gold was unfairly beaten down and would recover around the new year as portfolios would be rebalanced and uncertainty with Trump’s economic plans at the time would force investors to hedge their portfolio. And that’s what happened in January 2016. I closed the position at 28% gain.

While trading 3x leveraged ETFs, Be cautious as they always go down even though the underlying security goes up. The structure of leveraged and inverse ETFs are different than most retail investors think. They are not a good idea to be held for a longer time and as a significant portion of a portfolio.

The biggest loss of the year, both in a percentage and nominal terms, came from the 5th trade in 2017. The trade was long TVIX (2x leveraged volatility ETN, not ETF). I believed volatility would pick up from February to March (and it did a little bit). However, after TVIX underwent 1:10 reverse split in mid-March, I did not want to risk having the ETN go to single digits once again. So I closed the position at 17% loss.

To briefly sum up, the biggest gain was 28% and the biggest loss was 17%. In positive nominal terms, the profit was three times larger than the loss (positive number).

At the time, both NUGT and TVIX were a significant portion of the portfolio (Robinhood). Over time, I deposited more money into the account as I saved up from off-book jobs and summer internship. The account is now 6 times larger than it was at the beginning of 2017. Larger account allowed me to have more flexibility and lower my exposure to a single trade.

Top 3 Trades and Bottom 3 Trades
Current Positions:

I can only go long securities on Robinhood. Current positions are VRX (The biggest gainer at the moment, 112%. 14% of the portfolio), ORCL, XIV, ILMN, OMER, PSQ, SH, COL, TEVA, MTSI, and AXON (The biggest loser at the moment, -77%. 0.5% of the portfolio).

When talking about % gains on trades, traders should also look at those trades as a % of the portfolio. If I’m going to speculate on a one-time event, such as FDA ruling on a drug, I’m going to have a small exposure to that company (such as AXON). If I am profoundly convinced on the fundamentals of the company and/or technicals of the stock, I will have a higher exposure to that company (such as VRX).

It’s important to point once again these gains/losses are unrealized. The returns are subject to change…until the position closes.

Both PSQ and SH are inverse ETFs of the market. I have bought them as a small hedge for my portfolio as I’m long individual U.S. stocks.

Why am I long the stocks mentioned above? I will not go in-depth here.

  • $VRX: Extension of debt. Time flexibility to restructure the company.
  • $ORCL: Unfair share-price beat down after positive earnings report and market, in general, is trending higher.
  • $XIV: Because why not?
  • $ILMN: Someone is loading up big amounts of calls. Speculation it will be acquired at a huge premium.
  • $OMER: Friend’s advice (first time I took friend’s advice with actual money at risk).
  • $PSQ and $SH: Small hedge, as I mentioned above.
  • $COL: Speculated it might be acquired at 15-25% premium. United Tech (UTX) later acquires them at 18% premium.
  • $TEVA: TEVA calls were active after Allergan (AGN) was halted. Speculated upcoming positive news for TEVA. The week after, new CEO news. Sticking to TEVA as the new CEO has a great reputation and I’m confident his tenure will reward the shareholders.
  • $MTSI: Calls active and social media sentiment.
  • $AXON: Speculation on Alzheimer drug data. Chances were low, but I believed even a small positive side of the drug would help the stock price. I was wrong. Was initially 2% of the portfolio. Now 0.5%. Still open as I have nothing to lose.
Get Out?
Over 12% loss of value in less than 2 months (Fall 2017).
The face is from the movie “Get Out“

As you saw in figure 2 (and figure 3 below), there was a large drawdown in the portfolio. Over 12% of the portfolio lost value in less 2 months. Why was that? It was largely due to VRX and TEVA tumbling. Both were little longer-term strategy and high conviction both companies would turn itself around. After 2 months, both stocks rebounded and hit 52-week highs afterward. Other stocks in the port during the 2 months were performing fine.

If it is one thing I learned as a trader, it is that high conviction leads to an ego which then leads to losses most of the time. So did I have an ego in this case? I don’t believe so. I was sticking to the initial trade strategy on VRX and TEVA, and there was no material news. It was the market noise. If the company fundamentals changed, then I might have changed my strategy on the trade (either close, cut down, or buy more shares).

 

Upcoming ‘Portfolio Performance’ articles will be on other portfolios.

Couple of Announcements

1st Announcement

On the morning of Wednesday, May 10, I decided to check the Facebook notifications. Before I can check it, the first thing I see on the timeline is an article from Wall Street Journal (WSJ) that a friend shared a couple of minutes before. The article was titled “Sorry, Harvard and Yale, the Trading Whiz Kids Are at Baruch College.”

Baruch College, a city college that I attend, got mentioned on WSJ. Big deal. And it has to do with trading. Big deal.

Minutes after I finished reading the article that morning, the article started spreading around like a wildfire. It was the talk of the town.

The next day, I decided to stop by the trading floor at my college quickly to export important statistics to PDF. What I didn’t know was that CNBC was about to go live.

So I’m sitting on Bloomberg Terminal desk with a trader discussing the current events and S&P 500. We were in a deep conversation and CNBC decided to live stream a portion of our passionate conversation…on mute, unfortunately.

Khojinur Usmonov discussing the current events and S&P 500 Index with another trader
Source: CNBC, “Nation’s top trading club comes from New York public college“

First I was interview by Bloomberg. Now, I was on CNBC live, but not interviewed. In other words, millions of people watching CNBC did not know my name. Say my name.

Interviewed By Bloomberg

I’m proud of Baruch College.

2nd Announcement

Read this thread:

As to blogging, I’m not 100% sure if I will be able to write articles. If I can, I plan to write it and publish it here on Out of WACC. If not, you won’t see new articles until the end of August/early September.

Q1 2017 Performance: Equity/Commodity Trading

In the previous two articles, I wrote about my forex trading and equity investments performance for the first quarter of this year. In this article, I will talk about my 1st quarter performance for equity/commodity trading.

For the first quarter of 2017, my active trading performance for equities and commodities (commodity ETFs) was up 3.51%.

Equity/Commodity Trading Portfolio (Robinhood) P/L
The white line represents the start of the year.

For years, I could not trade equities and commodity ETFs due to commissions. Thanks to Robinhood, I’m not able to trade for free.

My first loss came from the first trade of the year. I thought energy, especially oil would go up over the next few hours, but I was wrong. So I closed my long position on Direxion Daily Energy Bull and Bear 3X Shares (ERX) at 2.13% loss (everything was tweeted out)

A month later, I made another call on oil. This time, short oil. I went long inverse oil ETF. Here’s why I thought oil would drop;

I closed the SCO position a month later at 22.55% gain, the biggest gainer of all positions closed during the first quarter of this year.

My biggest loss came from VelocityShares Daily 2x VIX Short-Term ETN (TVIX). I thought volatility would pick up in the coming month (and it did a little bit). However, after they underwent 1:10 reverse split on March 16th, I did not want to risk having the ETN go to single digits once again, so I indeed closed the position at 17.27% loss.

In nominal terms, the 22.55% gain on SCO is 3 times larger than the 17.27 loss on TVIX.

There are other positions that made and lost money. But overall, my portfolio was up 3.51% in the 1st quarter.

Current Positions:

I can only go long securities on Robinhood. My current positions are SPXS, WFC, LULU, DIS, EXPE, VRX.

I went long on Direxion Daily S&P 500 Bill and Bear 3x Shares (SPXS), which is inverse of S&P 500, because I believe investors are underestimating the negatives of Trump’s policies. Once investors realize the negatives of Trump’s fiscal policies and/or his actual policies are less stimulative as he proposed, the market will take a dump.

A lot of people think tax rate will be reduced to 15%. I have been watching some of Trump’s TV interviews, especially on Fox News, and it seems Trump himself does not believe tax cut will be 15% or lower. He basically said it might have to be little higher, say around 20%.

I also watched Trump’s body language and I believe Trump is not confident in what he’s saying about his fiscal stimulus plan as he was during the campaign.

So when the actual plan is released, investors will be disappointed.

SPXS is also a small hedge for my portfolio as I’m long individual U.S. stocks.

I’m also long on Wells Fargo (WFC), Lulelemon Athletica (LULU). I believe the plunge on LULU is overdone and could fill half of the gap. WFC fell after the earnings report last week. General bank earnings are trending higher and Well Fargo is no different. I went long on WFC also due to technical purposes.

I’m also long on Disney (DIS). I bought just at the start of rumors that Apple (AAPL) would buy Disney.

I’m also long on Expedia (EXPE). See this awesome tweet thread.

And finally, I’m long Valeant (VRX). I went long on the pharmaceutical company the day after Bill Ackman revealed he cut his $4 billion loss.

Valeant recently extended the maturity of their debt until the early 2020s, which gives them about 5 years to restructure their capital and the company. Plus, they have over $5 in cash for each share.

Just because Ackman lost big on VRX does not mean he’s not a great investor. He is a great investor (that’s why he’s rich?). If you watch his presentations and talks, he knows about he’s talking about. He does his research and deeply cares about other people. At least that’s what I think.

The current positions I mentioned above can change at any time or reverse. Thank you.

Q1 2017 Performance: Forex

As you may know, I published my forex performance for 2016 and since inception. From now on, I will also share my quarterly performance. March 31st marked the end of first quarter, here are my performance results for FX trading.

Forex Trading Performance – Q1 2017

For currency trading, I was up 2.15%. I know, it’s low (in % terms at least). But, allow me to explain.

Before this year, my currency trades used to be in 1,000 units (or 0.01 lots), lowest I can trade. Since I usually had about 10 positions, each of 1,000 units, the nominal amount was large enough. After depositing more money and getting a clear picture of my Forex performance, I decided to increase my trades to 2,000/3,000 units (or 0.02/0.03 lots) for each position.

Getting a clear picture of my performance – average gain/loss, drawdown, trade duration, the percentage of profitable trades, etc – helped me improve my performance significantly.

This quarter [Q1], I further minimized my drawdowns. By minimizing drawdown, I minimized my returns. And that works for me. Stable uptrending P/L with a low risk.

It is true Forex is way riskier than other assets classes due to its leverage, mostly 1:50. But, that does not mean your portfolio has to include a lot of risks.

While 2.15% return this quarter from Forex trading is low, it’s still big in nominal terms for me and I’m getting a much better understanding of my weakness/strengths as I look through the metrics.

I don’t have the key metrics (besides the returns) and charts to share with you for this quarter for one reason: FXCM was Banned from the U.S. (I’m not even surprised after what happened on January 15, 2015).

FXCM is a retail FX broker and my former broker. They were banned by CFTC for defrauding retail foreign exchange customers and engaging in false and misleading solicitations.

As a result, FXCM customers were automatically changed to a different broker, Forex.com by Gain Capital Holdings, on February 24th. Unlike FXCM, this broker did not offer an analysis of trades. In addition to that, a third-party software did not offer an analysis of trades for Gain Capital’s customers since the broker did not allow the software to be connected with it.

Good news is that I’m currently in process of changing the platform to MetaTrader, which will make it easier for me to track performance metrics. The other platform, ForexTrader made it harder for tracking key metrics.

For the next quarter’s results, you can expect to see more performance metrics for FX trading.

Live On Twitter

As you may know, I tweet out trades/investments I’m making. That’s one of many reasons you should follow me on Twitter if you haven’t already. One of many ways I measure success is through twitter followers, believe it or not.

Here are some of the tweets:

My target for annual FX return is 15%, with minimal violability (less than 4% drawdown).

Interested in investing in me? Feel free to privately message me for more details. The minimum investment is $1,000.

 

Note: Equity/Commodity portfolio performance will be posted later.

Update: “Q1 2017 Performance: Equity Investments” article is posted.

Update: “Q1 2017 Performance: Equity/Commodity Trading” article is posted.

Equity/Commodity Portfolio Performance: Inception & 2016

In the previous article, I laid out my performance for Forex portfolio since inception and for the year 2016. This one will briefly lay out the equity/commodity portfolio performance. Briefly, because I don’t have much statistics on it than for FX……for now.

Before going further, I should note: “Average price” includes Dividend Reinvestment Plan (DRIP) – the dividends I received were used to buy additional shares in the company.

Since inception (summer of 2014), I’m down 31%. I’m currently holding 9 companies, including the ones I wrote article(s) about; GoPro (NASDAQ:GPRO), General Electric (NYSE:GE), and Cisco (NASDAQ:CSCO). I don’t have Eli Lilly (NYSE:LLY) since my broker doesn’t allow me to short.

All shares of 9 different companies belong to 1 class: domestic equity. 59.4% is in large cap. 18.89% in mid cap. 3.66% in small cap. And 18.05% in “other domestic equity.” Will change the allocation this year; international equity, fixed income, etc.

On February 16, 2015, I wrote about Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) when the share-price was $43.95. Today, it’s trading at $62.14. I missed the opportunity to go long on it.

On April 12, 2015, I wrote about GE and believed GE was a strong by (it still is). Since then, GE is up 12.30%, from $28.06 to $31.51 (dividends not calculated). Dividends are automatically invested in new shares. Average price I paid for the shares is $25.99. I’m currently up 21.24%.

In the summer of 2015, I wrote about CSCO (part 1, part 2 AND 4Q FY’15 earnings report). Since the first article, CSCO is up 7.97%, from $27.99 to $30.22 (dividends not calculated). Average price I paid for the shares is $24.85. I’m currently up 21.61%.

On November 21, 2015, I wrote my first article on LLY and believed it was overvalued (it still is). Since then, LLY is down 13.98%, from $85.50 to $73.55. Second article on LLY was posted very recently.

On December 26, 2015, I wrote about GPRO and believed it was a buy. Since then, GPRO (and I) are down whopping 52.62%, from $18.34 to $8.69.

For the last year, my equity portfolio is down 12.61%. Because of $9.99 trade fee and low capital, I have refused to buy some stocks I wanted at times.

I recently opened Robinhood, broker with $0 commission. I’m planning to use it to actively trade equities and commodities.

As to commodities, I’m up 8.25% since inception (fall of 2016). I’m currently holding 50 shares of Direxion Daily Gold Miners Bull 3X Shares (NUGT), which is up 24.03%.

I might change my broker to Interactive Brokers (IB) from TD Ameritrade, as IB offers more tools for portfolio analysis.

If you didn’t like this performance/article, read the “Forex Portfolio Performance: Inception & 2016.” Maybe you’ll like that performance/article enough to like me again.

If you do, follow me on Twitter (@Khojinur30). I tweet out my trades live. If you don’t, peace.

Forex Portfolio Performance: Inception & 2016

 

WHAT A YEAR! Market sell-off. Complete reverse afterwards. Full of surprises, from Brexit to Trump (not for me since I predicted them).

During the global markets crash in August of 2015, I completely lost all the money I made that year plus some more in forex. Witnessing markets free fall – faster than Luke skydiving 25,000 feet without parachute – for the first time ever crushed my account to death. (For the record, I wasn’t trading in 2008 and had absolutely no idea what was unfolding that time).

Thinking euro will go to the parity level by the end of 2015, most of my positions were crowded in shorting EUR (The Big Short). Just when I thought euro would follow the markets, it acted as a safe-haven.

Lessons learned the hard way:

  • Always keep enough cash for emergency and/or new opportunities (could not make new trades)
  • Do not keep most things in one place (EUR short)
  • Do not let the perceptions – media, traders, experts, you name it – fool you (“Euro is not a safe-haven asset”)

Taking all these lessons, I completely changed my strategy and will continue to tweak it to adapt to the current conditions. After taking a break from trading in September (2015), I opened a new forex account.

Started off strongly, with high standard deviations, but enough for me to sit through that. High-risk/High-reward. As I continued tweaking my strategy, I reduced the swings in the P/L.

Figure 1: Forex Portfolio % Returns Since Inception (09/29/2015)

Starting in August 18 of this year (2016), my returns have been very stable, trending upwards (see Figure 1). It went from 144.49% return to 184.42% as of the last trading day in 2016. Last August, I made a significant chance to my strategy which led to stable returns trending upwards. I continue to tweak my strategy little by little until significant change is needed. Repeat.

Since inception (09/29/2015), I have returned 184.42%. In the second half of this year, I deposited more money into the account. In turn, the % returns you see in the pictures above and below, has a huge difference in nominal amounts.

Figure 2: Forex Portfolio Performance Since Inception

In 2015, I returned 117.48%. This year, I have returned 32.82%. Since the inception, percentage of profitable trades are 50.70%, with the average gain per trade 3.82 larger than the amount of average loss per trade.

Sharpe ratio is 1.13 (not good yet), with average monthly return of 11.01% and 33.79% standard deviation of monthly return. Compounded monthly rate of return is 7.22%.

I predicted Brexit and profited bigly off it. 30.77% of the profit came from pair GBP/USD. Thanks Brexit. How did I predict Brexit?

Predicting Brexit – 6 tweets
Figure 3: Top 3 FX pair P/L as a % of the total P/L

Largest loss was 5.21%, from pair AUD/USD. I don’t know what to blame except myself.

As to predicting Trump’s win, the profit was a fraction of Brexit profit, via other pairs than Mexican peso currency. The day after the election, the peso suffered its largest one-day drop since the Tequila Crisis of the 1990s. Too bad I did not have access to peso pair at the time. How did I predict Trump win? Tweet 1, 2.

If you invested $1,000 in me at the inception, that money would have been worth $2,844.23 today.

You can still invest in me. Minimum investment is $1,000. Contact me for more details.

Thank you.

Update: “Equity/Commodity Portfolio Performance: Inception & 2016” article is posted.

Biggest Failure of My Career: Hedge Fund Club

 

Do not train a child to learn by force or harshness; but direct them to it by what amuses their minds, so that you may be better able to discover with accuracy the peculiar bent of the genius of each. ― Plato

It is Wednesday, February 27, 2013. I’m giving a speech in front of 50-70 people on why they should elect me as their treasurer for Key Club at Edward R. Murrow high school.

During my junior year in high school, I became a member of Key Club, an organization which provides its members with opportunities to provide service, build character and develop leadership. This was the first club I ever joined, after avoiding all clubs and school events for 2 years.

After the speeches for all positions, members were to vote a person of their choice for each position. Unfortunately, I became in 2nd place for the treasury role. Well actually, I was in the last place since there were only two people running for the position. It was not a big deal for me anyway.

Several months later, I was sitting in my room staring at the news and currency charts. I was thinking about my future; college and career.

As I was thinking, I promised myself I would open my own club in college. What kind of club? I don’t know. But, I will open a club. Only time will tell.

A year later, I’m sitting in the same room staring at the news and currency/equity charts. I was weighting the costs and benefits of attending certain colleges. After being rejected from my number one choice, Columbia University, I had to choice between Binghamton University and Baruch College.

Why not Binghamton? Tuition was over $24,000, $14K had to come out of my own pocket (unless I got scholarships; not guaranteed). In others words, I would had to take out a student loan, which I promised I would never take. Lastly, the campus was four hours away from the financial capital of the world; New York City.

On the other hand, one major reason I wanted Binghamton was that I would move out from my parent’s house and be independent. But, the benefits were heavier on Baruch’s side. To this day, I still live with my parents; rent-free with……um……no……um……..no responsibilities.

During my first semester at the city university, I started going to Finance & Economics Society (FES) club. At the end of the semester, they were few positions open, one of them: Sales & Trading. I applied for it, got interviewed, and got accepted into the program. I got accepted not because I stood out from the crowd, but because there was no competition at all.

Joining a club with some smart people that conducted themselves professionally, was uncomfortable for me. A confront zone is a beautiful place, nothing ever grows there.

Over the next three semesters at FES, I learned incredibly so much both career-wise and personal-wise. Two important skills I gained were debating and leadership, thanks to Kenneth Tjonasam and the team. As the director of the S&T program, Kenneth challenged me and others to give our own ideas and asked us tough questions when we gave it. And he did much more than that.

Charles Schwab got paid a million dollars a year in 1920s, because of his leadership skills;

Why did Andrew Carnegie pay a million dollars a year, or more than three thousand dollars a day, to Charles Schwab? Why? Because Schwab was a genius? No. Because he knew more about the manufacture of steel than other people? Nonsense. Charles Schwab told me (Dale Carnegie) himself that he had many men working for him who know more about the manufacture of steel than he did.
Schwab says that he was paid this salary largely because of his ability to deal with people.

That’s how good Kenneth was. Except in this part, he is also a genius.

In the middle of sophomore year, I had a flashback; sitting in my room and promising myself I would open a club. At the time of the flashback, I was sitting in my room staring at the news and currency/equity/commodity charts. Without contemplating, I planned to start Hedge Fund Club (HFC).

I wanted to share my passion with others and give back to the Baruch community. The purpose of HFC was;

Hedge Fund Club’s purpose is to trade financial instruments actively while allocating different asset classes effectively. To maximize capital and minimize risks, the club will use top-down approach and technical analysis to find the best investment opportunities. The club will offer opportunities for the Baruch Community to get know the hedge fund industry and network with the people in the industry, developing Baruch College’s exposure to the hedge fund industry.

Over the next several months, I filled out the papers the student government wanted, in addition to finding a club adviser. My team and I chose Bruce Kamich, well respected and highly talented technical analyst professor at Baruch College. Professor Kamich was the best fit for the HFC’s mission and I’m thankful for his advice. I have yet to take his class.

And finally, the student government asked my team to hold three HFC meetings before an interview with them to get the club chartered.

My team (Vice-President – Thomas Jing, Secretary – Jamal Moody, and Treasurer – Jinay Shah) and I held the meetings in April and May, attaining 14 members. For the undisclosed reasons, the interview was forwarded to early September. Over the summer, I along with my team worked on most of the PT presentations and outlined the meetings for the fall semester. September came and there still was no interview. To sum up, there’s no HFC anymore (unless someone else starts it).

I take full responsibility for the failure of Hedge Fund Club. This is the biggest failure of my career. And this will definitely go into my book.

The reasons for the failure is classified. It will be declassified in my book, or when I’m on the cover of Forbes. (Few people know at this time).

I will continue to guide people who might be interested in markets/trading/technical analysis/investing/blogging. I will continue to meet with them during my own time.  I will continue to have conversations with them. I will continue to debate with them. I will continue to ask “why” if the reasons are not clarified.

While the vision and the goals for HFC will not see a light anymore, I will let it shine after college. I plan to create my own program and/or join a mentorship program.

I have seen extremely talented students. I want to make sure they use their brain for something they love. I have seen students with a strong curiosity in a subject (mostly finance related). I want to make sure they continue to build their knowledge foundation and guide them, but it’s up to them to choose which road to take. I have seen students with no clue what they want to do when they grow up. I want to make sure they go out of their confront zone and try out new things.

Wander around the unknown and you might just discover your passion. – Khojinur Usmonov

Technical Analysis: EUR/USD and S&P 500

This post will focus solely on technical analysis of currencies and indices.

EUR/USD (Bearish)

EUR/USD - Daily
EUR/USD – Daily

As you can see on the “Daily” chart, Symmetrical Triangle or contracting wedge (both very similar) has been formed. The trading range is contracting, not far away from breakout. You see the small yellow circle (around 1.1020) that EUR/USD is approaching? That’s where I would short EUR/USD. That’s the place where there are trend resistances, and Simple Moving Average (SMA) of 50 and 100 are approaching. Not only that, but Stochastic indicator should get close to 80 (overbought), as EUR/USD goes to that yellow circle. Let’s take a look at 4H (4-Hour) chart.

EUR/USD - 4H (4 Hour) Chart
EUR/USD – 4H (4 Hour) Chart

The first yellow circle you see on the “4H” chart was a sell single because support-turned-resistance at a rising trend line. Same thing is happening right now to EUR/USD, as it approaches the second yellow circle (around 1.1020).

The reason I’m shorting it in the tightening consolidation before the breakout is because there are many technical reasons to short it. Even if it goes opposite direction, my loss will be very limited (Just above the trend – around 1.1030)

Let’s take a look at 1H (1-Hour) chart.

EUR/USD - 1H (1 Hourly) Chart
EUR/USD – 1H (1 Hour) Chart

On 1H chart, I added Fibonacci Retracements indicator. Fibonacci Retracements basically act as support and resistance lines. The red lines you see on “1H” chart, are resistance lines. 61.8% level (or 0.618%) at 1.1012 is known as “golden ratio”. In my past expensive, 61.8% level has worked well. Plus, 61.8% level connects with the two trend lines in the yellow circle.

I would short EUR/USD as it approaches the middle of  the second yellow circle (around 1.1015). Stop loss: 1.1030 (just above the trends lines and golden ratio (0.618%) level. Target: 1.0890 (just above the support trend as seen in the charts above). My target level (1.890) will change as time goes on, to stay in-line with the support trend.

S&P 500 (Bullish)

Let’s take at look “Weekly” chart, going back as far as 2008.

S&P 500 - Monthly
S&P 500 – Monthly

As you can in the “Weekly” chart, ever since hitting bottom in early 2009, S&P 500 have been in a uptrend. If you look at the white-line, there’s a long channel (you can call it a trend if you want). Current price is just above the 50 SMA (Simple Moving Average). Plus, it’s much closer to the support line of the channel.

Let’s take a look at two “Daily” charts.

S&P 500 - Daily
S&P 500 – Daily
S&P 500 - Daily
S&P 500 – Daily

If you look at any of the two “Daily” charts, you can see that the current price is sitting on 200 SMA and on recent-uptrend support (yellow dotted line). Even though it’s a strong signal to go long, I would not. The reason is that it is a 3rd time in over a month that the price is sitting on 200 SMA and uptrend support (yellow dotted line) , and the recent highs in the uptrend range were unable to reach the trend resistance as well break the previous high. It shows that the bulls are losing control and bears are slowly gaining momentum.

Where I would go long is at the circle shown with yellow arrow (around 2042). It’s just above the strong channel (or a trend) support line (Bold-white line) as shown in all three S&P 500 charts above. My stop loss would be just below the bold-white line. My target would be at the resistance level of 2134.

If you have any questions, feel free to leave your questions in the comments section, and/or contact me. Thank you.