Forex Trading Recap: 18 December +18 Pips

Well, it seems the holiday markets are upon us.  Things have tightened up considerably during the past few trading days and the highest quality trading opportunities are few and far between.  The week before Christmas is always one of the toughest to trade, so unless you are a seasoned pro or just want to get in some gambling it’s often the smartest decision just to sit aside.

I did get a little bit of trading in during the European morning but I was extremely conservative in my approach.  Knowing that we had been very range-bound over the past few days I kept the management tight and only selected the best opportunities.  Things were still slow overall though, so I only managed to find two trades during the early session.  

I didn’t even bother with New York today because if you look back you will see that it has been very choppy lately.  There can still be some scalps in that type of market condition with Elite Range Bar trading but you need to really be on your game.  The risk/reward is always going to be poor when the range is so tight so if you have some profit there is no shame in taking it off the table a bit earlier than normal.  What was interesting about today’s New York session is that even though it started off with the typical chop, it eventually made a massive breakout move.  We could see this move building in the price action with our range bars and it was tradeable for the aggressive trader.  Since I wasn’t actually at the charts it’s hard to know what I would have done.  I would love to say I would take it without a doubt since it was such a beautiful breakout move, but it’s more likely that with just under 20 pips in the bag I would sit aside and protect what I had with a more conservative approach.