Short 1 (200 units) GBPJPY @ 5726
Stop @ 5849 (-123 pips)
Target @ 5603 (+123 pips)

Confidence level: 6/10

As soon as I put the trade on, price moved swiftly away from the box, then stalled.  I was up about 100 pips at one point, so I decided to move the stop loss to 5721 or +5 pips.  The trade then became risk free.

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Price started to move again, so I took profit on 50 units at 5672 for a +54 pip profit. Price continued in my favor so I closed out 100 units at 5595 for a +131 pip profit.

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At that point, I still had 50 units on.  I wanted to let it run for a bit to possibly capure more proft.  It was a risk free trade anyway, so I had nothing to lose.

Price finally showed this twin tower formation so I figured there was a good chance of reversal and closed the final 50 pips at 5565 for +161 pips.  Mission accomplished, I captured 30 more pips with that last lot.

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This was a good trade.  I followed my plan and bagged a good number of pips.  Final count was +120 pips when you average out all the exits.

First Position:

Long 1 (100) GBPJPY @ 4910
Stop @ 4748 (-162)
Target @ 5140 (+230)

Second Postion added looking for a bounce off the 4800 level:

Long 1 (100) GBPJPY @ 4813
Stop @ 4760 (-53)
Target @ 5140 (+327)

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Stopped out on both positions for a loss of -54 pips and -162 pips for a total loss of -216 pips.

One thing I learned on this trade was that I should use the original stop for the second position unless price move significantly in my favor (100+ pips).  Total account exposure was small, so there wasn’t too much harm done.

Short 1 (200) CADJPY @ 7164
Stop @ 7243 (-79)
Target @ 7005 (+159)

This was a squeeze box entry.

Some notes on the trade:

• Looks like a good downward triangle on 1 H, reward:risk  is 2:1
• JPY isn’t moving across the board so it looks like the CAD will have to carry the move
• No big news in either pair
• Skeptical about the trade, confidence 6/10

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I closed the trade early at 7189 (-25 pips) because price action didn’t look good on the 1 hour chart.

This was not a good trade at all because none of the candles acutally closed convincingly outside of the box.

Squeeze box trade.  Nice bounce off the bottom of the box, what I like to see!

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Approximately 1:1 risk reward so not a huge trade but worth taking.  I really like the fact that Oanda allows me to take these fractional lots.

Sold it on the breakdown and placed limit at the target which was a previous support point on the 1 hour chart.  I have been finding that playing the squeeze box to the next support/resistance level is usually the best way to go.  I was tempted to close the position at the first retracement, but I stuck with it and it paid off +125 pips on this trade.

Short 1 (200) @8300
Stop @ 8427 (-127)
Target @ 8150 (+150)

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What gave me confidence to stay in this trade was the fact that price was hugging the bottom of the box.  When it does that and the highs are sloping down, there is a high probability that stored orders are being cleared at that level and once they are cleared, the market is free to break the dealing range.

I exited this trade on Friday because I was going to sleep and it was the end of the week so I didn’t want to hold it over the weekend.  It was closed at 8194 for a nice +106 pip profit.  Price proceeded to drop another 100 pips and would have hit the target.  I’m OK with this though because I think it is better to bag pippage than to go to sleep and have the market turn or have the market open higher on Sunday and wipe out that profit.

Short 1 (500) @ 5033
Stop @ 5066 (-33)
Target @ 4850 (+183)

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As soon as price hit the previous support, I moved the stop to +5 pips to lock in profit.   I wasn’t comfortable with the price action.  Usually if price breaks that 5 minute squeeze box, it will fly through the 1 hour box.  This time it didn’t do that, so I got stopped out.  I’m fine with this trade for the time being, but I have to backtest this trade more to get more comfortable with it.

Long 1 (200 units) AUDUSD @ 6943
Stop @ 6840 (-103)
Limit @7044 (+1001)

Squeeze box breakout.   Similar to the EURUSD break I just took.

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I actually made a mistake on this trade.  I set the limit at +100 pips, NOT +1,000 like I intended.  Imagine my surprise when I was taken out of the market!  What I learned from this is to use my spreadsheet calculator to generate the numbers for me and not calculate levels one by one.

It was just as well though, my risk/reward was 1:1 and as you can see, the market rejected the previous reistance pretty violently.  I’m not going to sweat this trade too much.  I’m OK with making 100 pips!  Next…

Squeeze Box Breakout.  As you can see,

the market formed a range around the 62 EMA and 200 EMA and I was looking for a breakout from that level.

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In hindsight, it probably wasn’t the best looking squeeze box.  The 62 EMA and 200 EMA aren’t as close together as they should be.   I also entered late, I should have been in on the first 1H candle that closed outside the box.

The stop was hit at -247 pips but since I only traded a 100 unit lot, my losses were limited to about only half of a percent of total equity.

On the whole, not a bad trade.  It was a risk I don’t mind taking.  Maybe I just need to take profit earlier on squeeze box trades.