Buying, and bulls, and bears - oh my!

So my trade closed out last night and I profited about $200.00, which left me about $1400 in the hole still. I opened a position of 100,000 units buying EUR/USD, and accidentally clicked and closed it ten minutes later (while Leena and Becky were watching - real professional of you there, Kel.) I was not profiting (of course) when I closed it, so I am currently $1557.04 down.

Never the one to give up, I went right back to it and opened a position of 100,000 units buying CHF/JPY, based on logic that seems somewhat elusive to me now. Looking at a one day candlestick chart, CHF/JPY has been bouncing aroung 80.00 for a while. It's currently above that, but the chart looks pretty volatile, so I made sure to set my boundaries pretty wide, in hopes that I'll be able to keep a trade open for more than twelve hours, regardless of profit . . . It's all a learning experience, right? I've noticed that this game is way less fun when you're not profiting, and, believe me, I haven't made a substantial profit yet.

This morning, Julia and I got to follow around Ashraf and Jess as they traipsed through the Financial District in period dress, brandishing brochures and advertising the museum. It was fun for a while, but only a few people even looked twice at the costumes. New Yorkers are just too jaded sometimes, y'know? Julia and I, to be productive, took photos while Jess and Ashraf handed out flyers and even free admission passes, and Julia wrote a blog post to go along with the photos. After lunch, I prepared the video to go up on YouTube. It's currently publishing, so get excited! I also came up with a list of potential Facebook friends for the museum; I felt like a matchmaker for business organizations. Who knows, maybe the museum will get to take Reuters out for coffee one afternoon.

You win some, you lose most of them.

My trade closed out overnight, leaving me with a deficit of 1610.57. Ouch.

I've decided to finally take the plunge (you gotta win sometime, right?) and start trading USD/CAD. Overall, the trend has been on the decline, but it seems like it's bouncing up a little. Since the trend has been too up-and-down to make any real profit, I'm only doing a position of 100,000, and mostly to prove my word from before. I'm buying the pair, and I'll have to keep an eye on it tonight.

In other intern news, Julia and I finished the video today! Leena, Becky, and Kristin all watched it and liked it. SO glad to be done, and have something to show for it! It should be posted tomorrow. I think we're doing a mini project tomorrow, and then next week we are starting our new rotations.

Euronly live once...

I made one trade today, in an attempt to get myself back into the market headfirst. I had finished the weekend with a loss of $734.57, because I was away for the weekend and all my trades closed themselves out. I decided, after reading this article, to buy 200,000 units of EUR/USD. (I still don't have the jargon down...) I set my limits moderately high and low, so I can watch it for a while without it closing itself. I started the trade at 1.23450 (coolest price ever) and right now I'm breaking exactly even. My stop loss is set at 1.23000 and my take profit is 1.23747. Over the past day and the past few hours it's been on the upswing, so I'll continue to watch it today to see what happens. I think that the fiasco with Greece's rating right now may impact the price level, as evidenced by this article, but the retaliation that the article highlights will hopefully make the euro stronger.

Intern Journal up til 6/10

I had started my journal as a Google doc, so I just copied and pasted it here so that all my entries are together:

Week of 6/1
I began my first rotation in social media with Julia. We toured the museum by ourselves and decided to do a film project on the bull and bear statue, on loan from LaBranche and Co. On Thursday, after a couple days of intense research on the Internet and in the museum library and archives, we went to the NYSE Archives. We found some books about the Luncheon Club (who owned the statue) and toured the space the club had been. We even got to tour the floor and interview a longtime trader who had been a member of the board of the Luncheon Club! At the end of the week, Julia and I had essentially finished our research, and were ready to start making the video.

6/7
Official orientation: we learned a bit about being a docent and how to give an effective tour, as well as were introduced to the archiving software, Past Perfect. Alex also appeared, meaning that the senior intern team is now complete.

6/8
Leena gave a presentation in the morning about the trading contest, which I completely and entirely don't understand, through no fault of hers. Julia and I were hard at work all day on the video. She wrote the script, while I assembled stills and cut up the video of the interview with the trader. We realized that the video was going to be ten minutes long if we weren't careful, and I made a mental note to start condensing.

6/9
Julia went to her sister's graduation, so I flew this mission solo today. I finished condensing the script and gave it to Leena, who edited it as well. Looks like we're going to have to do all the voiceovers again next week - no real loss though, they don't take much time. I started assembling the video, and it seems like it's going to be a bit harder than I thought to keep it visually appealing; there's not much one can do to make a slideshow interesting.
TRADING: I made two trades today: GBP/USD, AUD/USD. I decided to trade GBP because Jennie made a profit last night, and Leena made a $1500 profit on AUD yesterday. I wanted to diversify a little bit to increase my chances of netting a profit (though it IS a greater risk.) I really like gambling so far.

6/10
I assembled more of the video today, and emailed Julia an update about what's going on. I went out on Broad Street and took photos of the Stock Exchange as it appears today, and snapped some shots of the Wall Street sign and the MOAF itself. They look pretty good, and will look even cooler in the video. I also kept trading - I dabbled in the buying the euro and lost a bit, I think I got confused as to what the trend was. We'll see how these trades fair over the weekend.

And so it begins...

I made my first trades today, very shortly after being introduced to the program - which worked out in my favor in some respects . . . and not so much in others. I started with a $100,000 trade (I don't think I am using the right jargon here) buying pounds for dollars (GBP/USD), and five hours later have made a 0.41% profit. I also have $50,000 in EUR/USD that is currently at a 0.03% profit, but has been bouncing around zero all day. I chose this trade thanks to the bold headline on DailyFX.com, so hopefully it'll make some sort of positive swing. (I picked GBP/USD because Jennie made a profit on it last night, and it seems to be continuing to work.) The only major mishap I've had today was playing with my stop loss on a $100,000 AUD/USD and accidentally shorting the pair (I think I said that right.)

Tonight, I'll be looking at DailyFX.com again and perhaps trying my hand at trend lines. I'd like to get into USD/CAD simply because I live on the border, but I'll have to do my homework on that first, perhaps watch the market over the weekend to see how much it fluctuates.