FOREX TRADER ARTICLE INDEX Issue Date Summary 114 30-07-2008 Diary of a Novice Forex Trader: After a real pig of a year (apologies to John Prescott) the Chimp broke into positive territory this week. 113 24-07-2008 Diary of a Novice Forex Trader: Hey, this is more like it; trading forex and making a bit of money! 112 18-07-2008 Diary of a Novice Forex Trader: My FTSE short was back to making me money again, although the market fall is getting a bit too close to my option positions for comfort. 111 11-07-2008 Diary of a Novice Forex Trader: Trading in this shortened week lacked quality and quantity. I dealt twice, both on Monday, and lost a total of 570 pips. Ouch! 110 04-07-2008 Diary of a Novice Forex Trader: I offered to take Mrs F-T out for lunch, but had been keeping an eye on the strengthening Euro. I reckoned that anywhere above $1.58 was worth a short bet, but fancied being a bit greedy. 109 27-06-2008 Diary of a Novice Forex Trader: I’m trading like Gordon Brown at the moment. Everything I touch is going wrong. 108 20-06-2008 Diary of a Novice Forex Trader: I started to experiment with the Chimp (no not like that, it’s sick and illegal) 107 13-06-2008 Diary of a Novice Forex Trader: After a blinding day on Thursday things went rapidly downhill. For the first week of the trial my forex advisory service lost money on three out of four trades. 106 04-06-2008 Diary of a Novice Forex Trader: The Chimp had an indifferent week with a mix of wins and losses providing a net no change on the week. Sadly I made good pretend profits, but real losses. 105 29-05-2008 Diary of a Novice Forex Trader: I had more success in playing FTSE than in the forex markets. Last week there were signs of a return to Dollar weakness, but the dip in crude oil prices has given a tentative bid to the greenback. 104 23-05-2008 Diary of a Novice Forex Trader: So Jordan (the model, not the country) fancies competing in the Olympics, in the equestrian event. I reckon the prospect of her bouncing over a few fences would do wonders for the viewing figures. 103 16-05-2008 Diary of a Novice Forex Trader: This was a fairly low-key week in the forex markets. Several of my normal currency pairs have lost their ‘trend status’ and look to be consolidating. 102 09-05-2008 Diary of a Novice Forex Trader: For possibly the first time this year the Chimp had the better of me 101 01-05-2008 Diary of a Novice Forex Trader: There was a lack of testosterone at the forex trading dealing desk this week. Chimpy lost 300 pips whilst I turned a small profit into a small loss on Wednesday. 100 25-04-2008 Diary of a Novice Forex Trader: Hard times in the City? Not any more at Deutsche Bank. A leaked memo reveals that the cost of prostitutes and porn channels will no longer be reclaimable on expenses. What a crafty way of getting the job count down. 99 18-04-2008 Diary of a Novice Forex Trader: There was an interesting piece in the papers, linking traders’ profits to hormones - which could be why I found Chimpy humping next door’s cat after scoring a winning trade. 98 11-04-2008 Diary of a Novice Forex Trader: Oh dear, I could have made money on my rugby forecast; the Gloucester, Munster match went pretty much as feared. It was a classic case of boys against men. 97 04-04-2008 Diary of a Novice Forex Trader: I had my best week of the year with 3 cracking trades providing the bulk of a 1114-pip gain. My year to date profit broke the 3000 barrier to reach 3533 pips. Wa-hey! 96 20-03-2008 Diary of a Novice Forex Trader: from lunchtime onwards the markets were just a purple haze of magic mushrooms and herbal cigarettes... 95 13-03-2008 Diary of a Novice Forex Trader: Smiley faces all round this week, Chimpy, because he stopped the rot with a 300 pip gain and me because I made 634 pips in one day. 94 07-03-2008 Diary of a Novice Forex Trader: Two fair-sized trades today ended in a net loss of 30 pips. I’ve been doing well riding the Euro$ train recently, but I got my timing wrong on the first trade. Monday morning and it felt like the Euro was set to run again, but fools rush in. 93 29-02-200813:19:7 Diary of a Novice Forex Trader: The Chimp and my fortunes were about as comparable as Mother Theresa and Jordan this week. Poor old Chimpy must be the softest ape around, he’s been taken to the cleaners so often. 92 21-02-2008 Diary of a Novice Forex Trader: To be honest I’m not clever enough to multi-task, but Mrs F-T could have told you that. Recently I’ve been trading a few more equities and I’ve found it difficult to keep just 2 eyes on the vast array of charts. I’ve been following FTSE, £$, Euro£, Barclays, Friends Provident, Euro$ and Xstrata fairly closely, plus all the occasionals like £Yen, $Yen, gold, oil and Google 91 15-02-2008 Diary of a Novice Forex Trader: Inflation was back and heading for the consumer sector; factory gate prices were nearly 6% up on last year, FTSE had lost all its early gains and Cable was on Viagra. 90 06-02-2008 Diary of a Novice Forex Trader: It looked like there was some monkey business going on in early afternoon trade; the FTSE dropped like my stomach at Alton Towers... 89 01-02-2008 Diary of a Novice Forex Trader: I blew my chance of finishing the month with 1000 pips. In a quiet forex week I lost 84 pips reducing my year to date total to 873. Still, it could’ve been worse; Chimpy lost a further 400 pips taking him to –1100 pips for the first month. Ouch! 88 25-01-2008 Diary of a Novice Forex Trader: The period around option expiry descended into farce. With a very jumpy market I rode a short position up to expiry, the cunning plan being to sell once my risk was known. 87 18-01-2008 Diary of a Novice Forex Trader: Poor old Chimpy might not last the New Year. A week of losses saw him down 700 pips on the week and year to date. My dream start to 2008 continued, though it might look very different at options expiry on Friday morning. 86 10-01-2008 Diary of a Novice Forex Trader: Hmm, so last night’s sale of FTSE isn’t looking too clever. The Dow recovered from its worse levels and the HBOS House Price figure, together with some good trading updates, pushed FTSE up to resistance at 6370. I’m currently about 300 points offside on that one. 85 21-12-2007 Diary of a Novice Forex Trader: As far as the figures for 2007 are concerned we’re closing down for business today. The Chimp finished on a horrendous week; losing 720 pips he slid all the way back down the snake, past his starting position for a loss on the year of 687 pips 84 13-12-2007 Diary of a Novice Forex Trader: The Chimp had a real Rambo week, a weekly profit of 720 pips cancelling out his loss for the year with a few pips to spare. My more sedate gain of 129 pips kept me short of the 6000 mark at 5972 pips. 83 07-12-2007 Diary of a Novice Forex Trader: So, the spin is that the Scowling Scot is snubbing the signing away of the UK to the Germans, sending the schoolboy Milliband along instead. Nice try Gordon, but our metaphoric blood will still be on your hands. 82 30-10-2007 Diary of a Novice Forex Trader: Phew! Once again, aren’t stop losses great! If all those trades that I was stopped out of yesterday had been allowed to run I’d be feeling as sick as a proverbial parrot today. I didn’t trade today except for writing a scrap of January Calls. I’d been waiting for a rally before looking at the calls and today seemed as good as any to dip a toe in. 81 24-11-2007 Diary of a Novice Forex Trader: At least one person isn’t suffering too much from the Northern Rock debacle. Adam Applegarth is apparently taking £350,000 with him when he waves goodbye to staff, depositors and shareholders. 80 16-11-2007 Diary of a Novice Forex Trader: How sick must Morgan Stanley feel; apparently they bet the right way on sub-prime debt falling in value but still lost a packet. Morgan’s announcement last night had prices falling quicker than Didier Drogba in the penalty box, so I expected today to be a big day. 79 09-11-2007 Diary of a Novice Forex Trader: Phew, what a day; I know that new highs in gold and oil and new Dollar lows are almost daily occurrences, but the accompanying news flow added to the occasion 78 02-11-2007 Diary of a Novice Forex Trader: It’s sad to witness the gradual demise of our offshore penal colony. A barmaid in Australia has been fined for crushing beer cans between her bare breasts. Not long ago this would have made her a national cult figure. 77 26-10-2007 Diary of a Novice Forex Trader: Hell hath no fury like that of a woman with a book to sell; leaks of the content of the Wicked Witch’s book, to be released around the time of next year’s Labour party conference, suggest the Witch will have the double pleasure of hitting Moses Brown where it hurts and getting filthy rich in the process. 76 18-10-2007 Diary of a Novice Forex Trader: I didn’t trade today, which was probably just as well as there were some wicked reversals in both the currency and equity markets. With options expiry on Friday morning the FTSE seems determined to give me the jitters right up to the end. 75 11-10-2007 Diary of a Novice Forex Trader: Suspicious goings on in the aftermath of US Payroll figures. The stronger than expected data resulted in (to me) an obvious drop in Cable. I jumped aboard 74 04-10-2007 Diary of a Novice Forex Trader: Not a great day for trading; I waved goodbye to 72 pips in a failed trade in Cable this morning. After a fairly dramatic sell-off from the pivot level the rebound failed to return above the level so I figured it was worth a sell. 73 26-09-2007 Diary of a Novice Forex Trader: A worthy mention to the Dorset parish of East Stoke, who exercised its right to vote in favour of holding a referendum on the EU Constitution (Treaty). Yes, I know it’s meaningless, but perhaps if local councils up and down the land followed suit it would give the Scowling Scot a subtle hint ahead of the election. 72 20-09-2007 Diary of a Novice Forex Trader: Hey! I was right again. No sooner had I predicted a change of fortune in last week’s diary then I lost on two trades today. Both seemed reasonable at the time; both would have stood a better chance with a bit more care and patience. 71 06-09-2007 Diary of a Novice Forex Trader: Wu hoo! Break open the Guinness. I reached another milestone this week. My gain on the week of 582 pips, mainly courtesy of trading the payrolls figures, took me over the 5,000 pips mark for the year to date. 70 06-09-2007 Diary of a Novice Forex Trader: Wary of these volatile markets I bought £$, but only in £2.I paid $2.0124 on a small retracement, but was far too anxious in taking my profits. I made 48 pips, selling at ’48, then watched as the price rose to above $2.02. Nearly 2 years into the job I ought to making more of those opportunities. 69 22-08-2007 Diary of a Novice Forex Trader: Still nervous of markets I sold £4 of $Y at 115.14, with a stop at 115.60, just above the day’s high. The trade was frustratingly dull until US time when the Dow kicked in. As equities fell, so did the currency and I bought back half my bet at 114.82. 68 17-08-2007 Diary of a Novice Forex Trader: Discipline or shrinking testicles? I’ve been closing off a few option positions early. I want to do other things in the next few days like watch my son at his rugby course, or have tea, or sleep, so I’ve bought back a few Puts just in case things turn nasty, as they’re likely to at any given moment. 67 10-08-2007 Diary of a Novice Forex Trader: Well, Big Ben Bernanke steered a steady course last night, conceding that credit conditions had become tighter whilst refusing to take the Greenspan Put out of the cupboard. 66 01-08-2007 Diary of a Novice Forex Trader: IG Index claim that I dealt just as the index was being rolled over at the close, it wasn’t a glitch and yes I had a net zero holding but would have to pay the spread on closing both sides. I wasn’t happy but had to settle with awarding them a rare black mark. 65 27-07-2007 Diary of a Novice Forex Trader: Meanwhile, Blair wannabe David Cameron did what all politicians do when under pressure, he went to draw attention to the plight of a third world country and away from the fact that he’s blown his chance with the electorate and Tories over the age of 25. 65 27-07-2007 Diary of a Novice Forex Trader: Meanwhile, Blair wannabe David Cameron did what all politicians do when under pressure, he went to draw attention to the plight of a third world country and away from the fact that he’s blown his chance with the electorate and Tories over the age of 25. 64 19-07-2007 Diary of a Novice Forex Trader: Arguably only a shortened trading week saved the Chimp from being wiped out! He suffered maximum losses on all three days that he traded; he didn’t trade on Monday or Tuesday when I was down in Devon. 63 12-07-2007 Diary of a Novice Forex Trader: Undeterred, I looked for another opportunity to enter the trade; this time I used a breakout, rather than a pullback, as my trigger. When sterling broke cleanly through £$2.03 for the second time, I bought at 2.0311, this time leaving myself more room by placing my stop at 2.0270. This was not only below the previous low but also just below the developing trend line. 62 05-07-2008 Diary of a Novice Forex Trader: Yesterday’s trade was such hard work that I’m unlikely to attempt anything today with the US on holiday. There’s an outside drain that needs unblocking and a parent-teacher meeting this afternoon to keep me busy. 61 28-07-2007 Diary of a Novice Forex Trader: Hey! Did you see Dr Who on Saturday? The evil Master arrived on earth as the barking-mad grinning prime minister of the UK who hypnotised the nation into voting for him. Once in power he disposed of his cabinet and invited aliens to take control of the Country. Sound familiar? 60 21-07-2007 Diary of a Novice Forex Trader: Congratulations to Sir Salmon Rushdie, knighted for his contribution to world peace. If any Muslims are reading this I’m being ironic. 59 14-06-2007 Diary of a Novice Forex Trader: I had enough technology to help me take 100 pips out of £$ this morning. It wasn’t clever, I sold after the announcement of a lower than expected CPI figure. It cost me a few pips to wait, just in case the mood was to ignore the slight improvement in the light of Mervyn King’s comments 58 31-05-2007 Diary of a Novice Forex Trader: Damn these concrete floors; I’m not sure that my underground fall-out shelter is going to be finished in time. The school bully (A.K.A Bush) has found a new kid on the other side of the playground, who isn’t so keen on backing down. 57 31-05-2007 Diary of a Novice Forex Trader: I bought back a short in FTSE, opened last Friday for a £150 profit. I still think that equities need to sell off properly, but I’m often too pessimistic and I fancied locking in a profit ahead of the long weekend. 56 24-05-2007 Diary of a Novice Forex Trader: On a day when Sterling rose by nearly 200 pips against the Dollar I made tuppence-ha’penny trading in the opposite direction and that was an accident! As I watched Cable drop below the pivot point I wondered if it was worth a quick sell before the MPC minutes 55 17-05-2007 Diary of a Novice Forex Trader: Finally, respect to the North London traffic warden who responded to a motorist tearing up her ticket by smashing the car windscreens and mirrors with her ticket machine. Nicely summed up by the motorist who said, “If I’d known the warden was going to cost me that much I’d have taken the ticket.” That’s the general idea. 53 03-05-2007 Diary of a Novice Forex Trader: Aren’t stop-losses wonderful? Against my better judgement I traded a breakout in £$ this afternoon. To be honest it wasn’t really a breakout, I dealt after only a 10-minute confirmation, rather than my usual 30-minute chart. I sold £$ at 1.9910 as it retraced to the pivot point, using a fairly tight 20 pip stop. 53 03-05-2007 Diary of a Novice Forex Trader: Aren’t stop-losses wonderful? Against my better judgement I traded a breakout in £$ this afternoon. To be honest it wasn’t really a breakout, I dealt after only a 10-minute confirmation, rather than my usual 30-minute chart. I sold £$ at 1.9910 as it retraced to the pivot point, using a fairly tight 20 pip stop. 52 25-04-2007 Diary of a Novice Forex Trader: The Chimp fared a bit better than me in a week that was hardly an auspicious week for either of us. I dealt only twice this week, probably twice more than I should have done, losing money on both occasions. 52 25-04-2007 Diary of a Novice Forex Trader: The Chimp fared a bit better than me in a week that was hardly an auspicious week for either of us. I dealt only twice this week, probably twice more than I should have done, losing money on both occasions. 52 25-04-2007 Diary of a Novice Forex Trader: The Chimp fared a bit better than me in a week that was hardly an auspicious week for either of us. I dealt only twice this week, probably twice more than I should have done, losing money on both occasions. 51 18-04-2007 Diary of a Novice Forex Trader: Whilst the Chimp resumed work today I pleaded superstition and decided to watch from the touchline. I came down at 7 o’clock to find not only that all systems were working, but also that the dollar had continued to weaken. 51 18-04-2007 Diary of a Novice Forex Trader: Whilst the Chimp resumed work today I pleaded superstition and decided to watch from the touchline. I came down at 7 o’clock to find not only that all systems were working, but also that the dollar had continued to weaken. 50 05-04-2007 Diary of a Novice Forex Trader: Thursday 29th March. Spring sees the annual ritual when the F-T household purges itself of accumulated rubbish; last year we hired a skip, this year it was a ‘man with a van’. Sadly this was one of the parts of the service sector lacking in service. 49 29-03-2007 Diary of a Novice Forex Trader: Amidst the obvious concern for their safety, or in Teflon Tony’s case the political inconvenience just when he was trying to clear out his desk, the irony of 15 British subjects accused of entering Iranian territory illegally seems to have been lost. 48 22-03-2007 Diary of a Novice Forex Trader: Despite the warmest winter since records began, the drains are overflowing. The government is continuing to pour our money down them, on this occasion to help parents recognise if their children are obese. 47 14-03-2007 Diary of a Novice Forex Trader: Absolutely Bloody Priceless! After the ‘No Change’ announcement from the MPC I decided to catch up on a few jobs ahead of the ECB’s announcement on interest rates. The first job was to confirm the transfer of my Virgin NTL broadband account. No sooner had the lad confirmed that everything was in order then I lost my connection. 46 07-03-2007 Diary of a Novice Forex Trader: I must confess that some pretty warm option positions took up a greater concentration level than the forex market. Regular readers will know that I’ve been nervous of equities for some time, and luckily therefore limited my exposure to a fall. Having said that, the ferocity of the fall and the consequent pricing of volatility has been a useful if slightly sweaty learning curve. 45 01-03-2007 Diary of a Novice Forex Trader: You’ll see below that both the Chimp and I were restricted to only 2 days of dealing. In that time the Chimp made 35 ips whilst I lost 44 pips. This brought our running totals to +865 and +432 respectively. 44 21-02-2007 Diary of a Novice Forex Trader: The trading range in £$ is pretty restricted with just over 100 pips separating the 50 day and 100 day moving averages. Stick in a pivot point and a couple of S&R lines for good measure and I’m inclined to leave alone until a confirmed break of either of the moving averages mentioned above. 43 15-02-2007 Diary of a Novice Forex Trader: I generally believe I’m making progress and cutting out a lot of the stupid trades, except for today. The two circumstances most likely to threaten my trading plan are having a lack of things to do and having too much to do. 42 07-02-2007 Diary of a Novice Forex Trader: Now I’m worried; I woke up with Man Flu (i.e. a sore throat and excessively busy nose). When did I last see a turkey? We had roast chicken last night, damn, where’s an eminent scientist when you want one? 41 01-02-2007 Diary of a Novice Forex Trader: This morning I sold £$; I was a bit slow in reacting to my MACD, RSI and stochastic indicators, and with the handicap of my dealing platform having a nervous twitch, sold at 1.9572 rather than the ’79 I was looking at. 40 25-01-2007 Diary of a Novice Forex Trader: Sterling looked pretty lively this morning, but I had planned to make further use of my free gym pass. I decided that I liked the set-up on £$ enough to try an automated deal, the only problem being that my platform wasn’t sophisticated enough to accept multiple limit orders. 39 18-01-2007 Diary of a Novice Forex Trader: Thursday 11th Jan; so, did I manage to benefit from the ‘shock rate rise’ by the MPC? No. I was out attending a presentation, but there would have been a real danger of me losing money very quickly. 38 10-01-2007 Diary of a Novice Forex Trader: The Chimp made a storming start to the year. I had been quietly pleased with my profit of 134 pips, but the Chimp put me in my place with a gain of 385 pips. 37 21-12-2006 Diary of a Novice Forex Trader: I should have guessed, rather than solve the problem, the new NTL set-top box has compounded it. The engineer left, assuring me that it was all connected but that I would need to wait up to 2 hours for the Internet and some channels to return (enough time for him to get away!). 36 14-10-2006 Diary of a Novice Forex Trader: I really think it’s great if a class of nine year olds still have that level of innocence, but this year we felt it was unfair to send our 9 year old off to school still believing in the great red man as he’d be ribbed something rotten. If there are any eight year olds reading this I’m only joking, of course Santa’s real. 35 06-12-2006 Diary of a Novice Forex Trader: In my previous existence as a Fund Manager I was generally indifferent to Christmas decorations around the office; it seemed a bit of an excuse for the more enthusiastic secretaries to have a fun afternoon covering Bloomberg screens in tinsel. 35 06-12-2006 Diary of a Novice Forex Trader: In my previous existence as a Fund Manager I was generally indifferent to Christmas decorations around the office; it seemed a bit of an excuse for the more enthusiastic secretaries to have a fun afternoon covering Bloomberg screens in tinsel. 34 30-11-2006 Diary of a Novice Forex Trader: Wednesday; saw further, though more limited, success in early morning dealing. This time I sold £$ as it broke back below 1.95. The charts suggested that, at least in the short term, the dollar was oversold so when 1,95 was broken I sold 3 lots at a slightly lucky 1.9501, placing a 30 pip stop just above the day’s high. 32 16-11-2006 Diary of a Novice Forex Trader: After paying the equivalent of a round of drinks for two coffee and muffins I volunteered to accompany Mrs F-T into ASDA (again, something I would never normally do) on the proviso that if I turned white and started shaking we would leave immediately. All in all it’s been a challenging year; cooking, decorating, cleaning windows and now going shopping. 31 08-11-2006 Diary of a Novice Forex Trader: I found a very apt quote to sum up the present state of this country, “No matter what happens somebody will find a way to take it too seriously.” The trouble is they’re mostly in government or legal practice. 30 03-11-2006 Diary of a Novice Forex Trader: For the second consecutive week Chimpy has been running the dealing desk and to very good effect. With three maximum profits he made 305 pips on the week, bringing his running loss down to 545. 29 26-10-2006 Diary of a Novice Forex Trader: Good news for Camilla; UK surgeons have been given the go ahead to carry out the world’s first full face transplant, though Wayne Rooney and a hairy ginger chap from Borneo are laying claim to an earlier case. 28 19-10-2006 Diary of a Novice Forex Trader: To anyone who was expecting to read about my exploits in the currency markets over the past week please accept my apologies. Unfortunately too much management time has been spent on two major distractions, one of which is now an improving situation, the other is resolutely buggered! 27 12-10-2006 Diary of a Novice Forex Trader: The morning was predictably dull ahead of announcements from both the UK and European central banks. I made a cheeky 30 pips selling sterling after the ‘No Change’ announcement as it broke through the pivot support line. 26 09-10-2006 Diary of a Novice Forex Trader: You couldn’t make it up….Home Office proposals to fine muggers £100 on the spot. This could also apply to assault, threatening behaviour and other offences where it might just be preferable to remove the offender out of harms way 25 28-09-2006 Diary of a Novice Forex Trader: To my shame I’ve introduced myself to E-Bay. Youngest Son has really improved his reading and has been enjoying my old collection of Ladybird books. 24 22-09-2006 Diary of a Novice Forex Trader: So, the Liberals have changed their policy on taxation. That should have motorists quaking in their 4 X 4s! They could also change their policies to include painting motorways green and banning the eating of meat- that’s the beauty of being in the Liberals, you can say what you want because it’s never going to happen. 23 14-09-2006 National Don't Trade Day?: Wednesday; Have I missed something? Is today National Don't Trade Day? The range for £$ up to 1pm has been 45 pips, and that's only thanks to a post employment data spike! The FTSE has now managed a full 26 pip fall from the early morning mark-up. 22 07-09-2006 Diary of a Novice Forex Trader: Good grief! Talk about taking one for the team. As part of my mission to reduce costs to the F-T household I volunteered to transfer to a new fully NHS dental practice, where the dentists' names suggested that their parents had deprived Carol Vorderman of all her consonants. 22 07-09-2006 Diary of a Novice Forex Trader: The Chimp and I experienced differing fortunes over the week. I guess the Chimp managed to illustrate the increasing volatility in the market, suffering maximum losses on three days but gaining maximum profits on another. 21 01-09-2006 Diary of a Novice Forex Trader: I read with concern the Department of Health's prediction that by 2010 England will have more than 13m obese people. I'm not just concerned because most seats on public transport are designed for 2 regular adults, or of the prospect of not being able to see between the gaps at school concerts where, at best, sight of one's child is a non-optional extra. 20 25-08-2006 Diary of a Novice Forex Trader: Aren’t holidays great? If I can make some money I’m going to have another one. This was the first F-T family holiday without the two older children, which was a shame but inevitable at some point. A totally non-relaxing but great fun break at CenterParcs was followed by a week watching youngest son on a rugby training week, run by coaches from the Southern Hemisphere. Whilst the drills weren’t that different their stronger emphasis on handling skills explains a lot about the standard of the senior players. 19 03-08-2006 Diary of a Novice Forex Trader: Scientists in Australia have developed a pill they believe might stop or slow the onset of Alzheimer’s disease. The obvious flaw to this is will the patient remember to keep taking the pill? 18 21-07-2006 Diary of a Novice Forex Trader: More trouble for Home Secretary John Reid as it emerged that the chief suspect in the original Jack the Ripper case was a Polish Jew. It’s not yet been discovered whether he was out on early release when he committed these atrocities. 17 13-07-2006 Diary of a Novice Forex Trader: The most stunning own-goal of the week didn’t even come from the World Cup, but from Blair II with his ‘hug a hoodie, cuddle a criminal’ speech. The original Blair might be an insincere poodle, but at least he employed people who could judge the public mood. 16 07-07-2006 Diary of a Novice Forex Trader: Top job at the moment must be the ‘weather-man’ on TV-, “…. and following today’s scorching weather across the country the met’ office are issuing a heat wave warning for the next 2-3 days. But up in Scotland, where you B*’#t*#ds wanted us to lose the football, today’s thunderstorms will be followed by more thunderstorms, flash floods, thunderbolts from Zeus himself and a wee bit of sunshine to dry you all out at the end of the week”. 15 30-06-2006 Diary of a Novice Forex Trader: I really wouldn’t recommend this ‘job’ to any-one who cares about their looks. My gardener/commodity trader mate (who is far more successful than me) claims to be losing more hair with every new option that he writes. And, in addition to the reversal of muscle to fat ratio since giving up work, sitting in the barber’s last week I was hard-pressed to see any dark hair falling onto the apron. 14 25-06-2006 Diary of a Novice Forex Trader: I’m blaming an illegal immigrant for an off-the-ball foul on Michael Owen. Unfortunately all we saw on the telly was Owen collapsing, the immigrant long since disappeared. Bad luck Northern Rock. 13 15-06-2006 Diary of a Novice Forex Trader: A combination of ‘Wayne Rooney fever’ and a week of important data, not to mention several central bank speeches, resulted in a dire week. I resolved not to get sucked into trading unless I could sense some enthusiasm out there. Instead I achieved a few landmarks; At long last I ordered my laptop-expect there to be more cursing than from Frank Lampard’s fiancé when I try to connect to the internet via a router. I also ventured further into ‘new man’ territory; washing the breakfast dishes; transferring the washed clothes to a tumble drier(not an easy task as both machines look pretty similar); even offering to help with the tea on Monday, but at this point was shown the red card by Mrs F-T –circa fan ovens, what’s all that about then? 12 08-06-2006 Diary of a Novice Forex Trader: I’m glad to hear that Wayne Rooney’s toe is in better health than Al Zarqawi, though I suspect the media build up will be the kiss of death to his chances of fame and glory over the next month. And for those of us unable to see the recovering star live, big screens have been erected out at Canary Wharf, and Monkey World in Dorset are letting kids in for £1 for June only. 11 01-06-2006 Diary of a Novice Forex Trader: So the future of the Minister for Pies, Porking and Paperclips is linked to that of the People’s Prime Minister. I wonder how many Labour MPs will consider killing two birds with one stone. 10 25-05-2006 Diary of a Novice Forex Trader: BUMP! This week my trading came back down to earth with a resounding thud. I’m hoping this was just a 50% Fibonacci retracement of my last 9 weeks’ gains. I hadn’t been increasing my risk, or particularly changing my style, in fact that might have been part of the problem, I was just hopeless. Today was the only day when I managed to finish in profit. Sure, I had some wins but none big enough to compensate for all the trades I was stopped out of. I would have done better to follow the Chimp! 9 18-05-2006 Diary of a Novice Forex Trader: I'm afraid this will be a fairly subdued diary this week. I'm battling with 'man's flu', which might seem like a common cold to women out there, but it's still hard to concentrate. This is obviously one of the downsides to working from home- the boss doesn't say, "You look terrible. Why don't you go home and get some rest?" 8 11-05-2006 Diary of a Novice Forex Trader: Once again I’m indebted to The Sun. I was complaining to Mrs F-T that although I had plenty to say this week there was very little humour. I’m actually concerned that NTL have installed a ‘humour filter’ on my e-mails as they are drying up faster than Thames Water. I had a quick scout through the Sun web-site and came across this beauty. A disabled Student from Reading has ‘slammed council bosses because they don’t allocate his carer the 3 hours a week required to braid and grease his afro hair’. Don’t get me wrong, I have the utmost sympathy for anyone with a disability, but surely a number one haircut with tramlines is still trendy and more manageable. 7 04-05-2006 Diary of a Novice Forex Trader: Bah Humbug! Don’t get me wrong, I love holidays and days off. It’s just that I’m a simple guy and my way of surviving a complicated world is to create certain routines (i.e. get up at 7 and update all my charts, check for economic data and important speeches; or get on the rower for 5 minutes, exercise 2 body parts and finish on the punch-bag; shave, shower and change clothes so that Mrs F-T doesn’t think we’ve got squatters). Weekends can cope with a break in the routine as they become a sort of routine in themselves (divided into rugby season and non-rugby season), but constant days off really don’t help. 6 28-04-2006 Diary of a Novice Forex Trader: "Hey guys, What you guys in the media must understand is that if some-one with the charm and looks of my Deputy Prime Minister gets the chance of 'two shags' in one life-time he's gotta go for it." What a priceless story, but with Labour reeling under dodgy expensive hair-dos, crazy NHS claims and the loss of 100s of foreign criminals I wonder who leaked it! 5 21-04-2006 Diary of a Novice Forex Trader: Our Easter was a period of disappointing discoveries. No, I’m not referring to Judas Iscariot’s well run but slightly belated PR machine. Youngest son found out that the Easter bunny doesn’t exist (We’d never encouraged him on this theme in the first place) and consequently that neither does Santa Claus. But what really upset him was the realisation that although these two were fictitious Gordon Brown does exist. 4 14-04-2006 Diary of a Novice Forex Trader: So, what've I been up to over the past week? Well, I could charitably describe my time as 'more balanced'. As last Friday was month-end, quarter-end, Japanese year-end and nearly the financial year-end what better way to spend the afternoon than being taken out to lunch by my daughter? I can even put it down as Continuing Professional Development as she knows far more about economics than me, not that we were sad enough to spend too much time discussing high finance. 3 07-04-2006 Diary of a Novice Forex Trader: "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results." Benjamin Franklin joining in the debate on the future of English rugby. 2 31-03-2006 Diary of a Novice Forex Trader: This new profession of trainee forex dealer might not last long. I can't kick, I've been known to knock the ball on and Mrs F-T has often accused me of a lack of imagination- so I might dig the spiders out of my old gum-shield and apply for a position in the England three-quarter line. What a woeful season. I'm fully in favour of 'route 1'rugby, but only to create enough space for the pretty boys to glide over without ruffling their hair. At least Bath's position looks slightly less precarious following a superb win at Gloucester and a last gasp win against Newcastle. 1 01-02-2006 Diary of a Novice Forex Trader: A bit of background. Up until last August I had been a pretty successful bond fund manager, relying on a cautious, cynical style of management. In August redundancy in a part of the country not known for its investment options forced some awkward choices- local job sites suggested that I was in luck if I wanted to be a social carer, mortgage adviser or a paraplanner (what the hell is a paraplanner-it doesn't come under 'armed forces' in the jobs section?).