Trading this week

We again will not be trading client funds live this week. Market conditions are extraordinarily unsettled and doing so would be gambling.

The recent developments in World economic policy (ie U.S. Bailout plan, Joint 0.5 point rate cut by major Central banks, injection of billions of $$ into financial system by central banks, etc.) have been fascinating to watch to say the least. And while this is not the forum to give political opinion, I will say that what has been done does not seem to be working. Lets hope that the steps taken this week have the affect we are all hoping for and things begin to calm down.

Moving Forward

The S&P 500 and DOW have experienced the biggest fall since 1937. As you know we are not trading live money with the exception of a partner's account and on Monday morning early we placed that account on hold as well. Many are asking how exactly all of this turmoil really affects our system. Our trending strategies are actually helped by the market craziness. Our ranging system however is very much hurt by these conditions. Our plan moving forward over the next few weeks is to continue to assess the situation, not trade the ranging strategy until the market completely settles down, and continue to trade our trending strategies. We do expect to place 3-5 high probability entries on our partner's account this week.

Alpari Demo Server STILL Down

Many have asked what has happened with the Alpari demo. The Alpari UK demo server continues to be down with no word on when it will be running again. We have not abandoned that demo. As soon as the server is back online the trading will resume on that account. The Varengold demo is still running but has taken a pretty sizable hit as it attempts to weather this market mess.

Credit Crisis Deepens

The credit crisis is deepening as it is becoming clear the economic problems are not confined to the U.S. The news drastically affected prices over the weekend and continues to do so even before the open of the European markets today. For example, since the Asian markets opened, the AUD/JPY has dropped 450 pips. To put that into perspective, only a hand full of weeks all year have seen 450 pips worth of drop or climb from the AUD/JPY and we have seen that in a matter of hours. The case is similar with many other pairs which more than likely means we are in for an amazing day.

We continue to hold off on trading live clients.

Here are some additional links of interest:

$68 billion German bailout of Real Estate investment firm.
Bank writeoffs could triple?
The Carry-Trade is Dead.