UK Retail Sales – Change in the value of sales at the retail level

4:30 AM EDT
GBP/USD

In March this came out at -.3 and -1.3 with a 33 pip spike. In April we saw 1.1 and 1.5 (huge deviations) with a 30 pip spike. In May we saw -.3 and -1 with a 27 pip spike.

As long as we see a good deviation at this release, we should see a nice spike. Anything at .3 or higher will cause a decent move.

NZD GDP q/q – Change in the value of all goods and services produced by the economy

6:45 PM EDT  
NZD/USD

In September this came out at -.4 and -.2 with a 46 pip spike, 25% retracement, and continuation to 60 pips in 6 minutes. In March it came out at -.3 and -.4 with a 30 pip spike. The problem was that it was very volatile 5 or 6 seconds before the trade and the data came out 3 seconds EARLY, causing the spike to happen 3 seconds before the posted time. It did spike nicely, retraced very little, and continued to 55 pips in 4 minutes.
This has had some decent moves in the recent past but you never know. In the best case it will come out on time with nice deviation.
Be carefull for early movement lets say 1 minute before the trade. If that is the case get out fast.

Trades for week of June 17 thru 22, 2012

Tue 6/19 4:30 AM – UK CPI y/y 
Wed 6/20 6:45 PM – NZD GDP q/q (Straddle)
Thu 6/21 4:30 AM – UK Retail Sales (Straddle)
Thu 6/21 8:30 AM – CAD Core Retail Sales
Fri 6/22 8:30 AM – CAD Core CPI

The UK Retail Sales is the best opportunity this week.

Trades for this week

There are just two trades this week. None of them is a great trade, so it is up to you whether to trade them or to taka a rest from the news trading this week.

Wed 6/13 8:30 AM – US Core Retail Sales    
Wed 6/13 5:00 PM – NZD Official Cash Rate

CAD Employment Change – Change in the number of employed people in the last month

8:30 AM EDT
USD/CAD

At 7:00 am EDT Canada will release Employment Change and Unemployment Rate. We will trade the change. The Rate is expeced to hold at 7.3%. The change is expected at 10K after a previous 58.2K.
There is some US news and also the Canadian Trade Balance that comes out at the same time, but I do not expect these to have much impact on the Employment data.

UK Official Bank Rate – Interest rate at which banks lend to each other

GBP/USD

At 7:00 am EDT, the UK will release their Interest Rate Decision and Asset Purchase Facility. We will
plan to trade both simultaneously. The rate is expected to hold at .50 and as of this writing, the APF is shown by the news services as expected to hold at 325 Billion Pounds. This may change by news time, as there is quite a bit of talk that APF will increase. If it does, will it be by 25 or 50 Billion Pounds?

AUD Employment Change – Change in the number of employed people for the prior month

9:30 PM EDT

AUD/USD

What can I say. This is my favorite trade. The normal movement for this news is about 50 pips or more. Hopefully it will behave nice again. 

AUD GDP q/q – Change in the value of all goods and services produced by the economy

9:30 PM EDT
AUD/USD
Buy/Sell trigers 0.2

In September it came out at .2 and .7 with a 22 pip spike, 25% retracement, and continuation to 30+ pips. In December it came out at .2 and .6 with a 30 pip spike. BUT … it spiked up 10 pips about 15 seconds before the trade.Watch for premature moves like this and act accordingly- get out fast :).
In March it came out at -.4 and -.1 with a 42 pip spike, 30% retracement, and continuation to 55 pips in 15 minutes.
If we get 0.2 deviation it will be great, probabli the move is going to be somethig around 40 pips. If we get 0.1 we still can make 20-25 pips. 0 deviaton is the worst scenario, hopefully it will not happen.
Good luck and may God be with you.

AUD Cash Rate – Interest rate for overnight money market deposits

AUD/USD

Looks like 11 economists say they will leave the rate at 3.75, 12 say they will drop it to 3.5, and 4 say they will drop it to 3.25%. This will be cause for a wild ride. Here are the two things most likely to happen. The highest odds are that they will lower the rate by .25%. This will cause a spike down. They could also lower it by .5 causing a much bigger spike down, though this is much less likely. Or they could leave it where it is, which would cause a spike up. But I think this is far less likely, though not impossible.
Here is what I am planning to do. I will do a sellOnly on this. If they wind up leaving rates the same, it will spike up and I will miss it. I’m willing to take that chance. It is far more likely rates will go down again.
As always, be ever vigilant for premature spikes. If you are doing a sellOnly, you don’t care about premature spikes up, only down. If you are trading in both directions, you care about both. Also don’t be surprised if the spread gets wider than usual. Might even want to compensate for that in your settings. Also I would recommend getting out right after the spike unless it comes out at .5.

Trades for week of June 3 thru 8, 2012

This week we have:

Tue 12:30 AM – AUD Cash Rate     
Tue 9:00 AM – CAD Overnight Rate
Tue 9:30 PM – AUD GDP q/q
Wed 7:45 AM – EUR Minimum Bid Rate
Wed 9:30 PM – AUD Employment Change
Thu 4:28 AM – UK Services PMI
Thu 7:00 AM – UK Official Bank Rate
Fri 8:30 AM – CAD Employment Change

The AUD GDP and AUD Employment are the best trades. The CAD Employment might be OK but there is a ton of news coming out at 8:30 AM on Friday, so this will add some risk into the trade. None of the interest rates are forecast to change but I don’t have the economist data yet to know if there are opportunities there.

US Non-Farm Employment Change – Change in the number of employed people in the last month, excluding the farming industry

EUR/JPY, USD/JPY           

There are two trades today worthy of consideration, but before we consider them, we should be aware of the big picture. Due largely to the continuing mess in Europe, both the GBP/USD and EUR/JPY (the pairs we will be trading tomorrow) have been on huge downward pushes.
There are lots of factors that play into trade decisions when the markets are in this condition, but a good rule of thumb is to trade only in the direction of the trend. The Straddle has a feature called sellOnly. Simply find sellOnly and set it to y. This will cause it to only enter a pending sell order. I fear if these come out as buys, we will see a spike up but hard spike back down due to all the sell orders that are evidently piled up above the current prices. 
It’s possible we could get a buy on one of these and there could be a big spike up, but I’d rather advise you to do a sell only and take the requisite verbal abuse for having advised wrongly than to have us all in on a buy that whipsaws and takes us all to the cleaners. Plus the odds of a buy for the NFP seem extremely small to me.