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Lessons from a Decade of Trading the JPY

December 20, 2016 by Lior Alkalay 1 Comment

The past decade has been a turbulent one for the Japanese Yen, or the JPY as it’s familiarly known. The Yen’s multi-year bullish trend which started in the 1990s ended and it flipped into a brutal bearish correction. Moreover, the Bank of Japan embarked on an unprecedented journey of more and more Quantitative Easing, effectively printing trillions of Yens to revive its stagnant economy. And finally, let us not forget the tsunami that hit Japan’s coastline in 2011 which tragically took a very hefty toll in human lives and which sent jitters across Yen pairs.

So, why am I dwelling on this? Because this decade of Yen turbulence has provided us with some very important trading lessons on the JPY, specifically, and on trading, in general. In this article, I will elaborate on two important lessons for both the novice and experienced traders that I’ve learned through trading which may not be immediately intuitive.

JPY Lesson on Natural Disasters

In the period that preceded the 2011 tsunami, I was expecting a major turnaround specifically in the trend of the USD/JPY, and in the Japanese Yen, generally. As I’ve often said, the longer the duration of your trade the more fundamentals will have an impact on the trend. Back in 2010-2011, I was focusing on the Japanese Yen which was in a multi-year bullish trend and so fundamentals were critical. Japan’s economy was suffering from persistent deflation and weak economic performance and that warranted a massive stimulus. Of course, any form of stimulus, either monetarily from the central bank or fiscally from the government, usually means a weaker currency. And so, that meant the end of the Yen’s strength and the start of a bullish trend in the USD/JPY (which moves in reverse). That meant that the bearish trend of 13 years would finally come to an end. Of course, that is provided stimulus would be forthcoming, which I thought was very likely.

Then, on March 11, 2011, the tsunami hit the coast of Japan. And as hysteria hit the markets, the USD/JPY plunged. Investors were crowding in to safety and speculation grew that the Yen’s long-term trend of appreciation would intensify as investors sought shelter.

The USD/JPY tested the 76 level and bounced back after a concerted effort by central banks across the world. Several months later, the pair finally bottomed out at a slightly lower level of 75. And the bullish rebound, aka weaker JPY, started in 2012.

What is the lesson? The lesson is that natural disasters in large economies, even severe ones, generally cannot change the long-term economic fundamentals and, therefore, cannot change a currency’s long-term trajectory. The JPY eventually had its trajectory to playout, i.e. the bottom, and the rebound took place only a few months later.

That means that even a disaster of this magnitude should not change your long-term strategy. Since a natural disaster can create short-term volatility it could present an opportunity to ride a long-term trend or a long-term turnaround at a more convenient entry.

JPY: Leg Down Vs Double Bottom

When we look at the USD/JPY bottoming out during 2012, we can see a rather interesting pattern. Rather than a double bottom warranted after a multi-year bearish trend (bullish JPY), what we see is a bullish wave right after the last bearish wave. The intermediate zone between is uncharacteristically short and the range uncharacteristically narrow. One common mistake is just to assume we had a swift bottoming out process, but the real answer is that that is a leg down and not a double bottom.

JPY

The key difference between a leg down and a double bottom is highly practical from a trading standpoint. On a double bottom the rebound takes much longer, with the pair fluctuating at lower levels for longer. Once the short sellers are shaken off, the rebound begins. On the other hand, in a leg down scenario the rebound is much quicker. But there is a price for that quick rebound. Because a leg down does not validate a change of trend, our prudent assumption should be that the bearish trend line should be respected and we should target Point X rather than Point M, at the peak of the last wave. Lastly, a leg down would mean another leg down is required over the long run and that means that we should be alert to a potential change over the very long run.

JPY

What is the lesson? A leg down means a quicker rebound but with a lower potential while a double bottom means a slower rebound but one that lasts much longer. And, of course, we should always be on alert for another leg down. It should be noted, however, that that might take a long while especially in the case in which Point M is broken, which would signal a much wider rebound.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: double bottom, JPY, USDJPY

Scalper EA Other Pairs

March 26, 2013 by Shaun Overton Leave a Comment

A number of readers are using the scalper EA in live accounts. The number one issue that many of them cited is that my research focused solely on the EURUSD. Does it work on other forex pairs?

Absolutely. However, it doesn’t work on all of them. It’s important to follow the same logical process that explained why the expert advisor works so well on the EURUSD.

Analyze the scalper EA in Excel charts

We must dive back into Excel to evaluate the original hypothesis. My expectation was that the strategy should work on charts where the distance of the price from the 200 SMA forms a nice inflection midway through the curve.

GPBUSD price & SMA 200 distance frequency for the scalper EA

The frequency of various distances of the price from the 200 SMA on GBPUSD.

The area right around the 0.5% marks the inflection point. As a reminder, you can think of the curve as being composed of two parts. There’s the steep part, which is where the price is highly likely move. Then there is the flat part. That means the price drifts instead of moves.

Think of slope as rate of change. A steep slope means a fast rate of change. The price is likely to be anywhere but here on the next bar.

Flat slopes make for slow rates of change. The price is in fact very likely to remain a similar distance from the SMA in future bars.

Slope of frequency of price and SMA 200 distances.

The graph contains 2 slopes. A steep slope and a flat slope. Both are marked in red.

The strategy only works when price is likely to stay in the same spot. We are, after all, scalping. The opportunity only exists when the expert advisor can trade in the chop. The chop only exists when the slope of the frequency line is flat.

I used my experience on the EURUSD to infer that 0.75% would make for a natural starting point to evaluate for the moving average envelope. It’s far away enough from the inflection point to overcome spread costs, but close enough to yield a solid number of trading opportunities.

The initial results came out even better than the EURUSD. These results do not include slippage, commissions or spread costs.

GBPUSD Results

Results for 2011 for the scalper EA on GBPUSD

Results for 2011 for the scalper EA on GBPUSD

The results are very much in line with the original idea. Percent accuracy stayed in the same ballpark, coming out to 81%. The profit factor jumped very nicely to 2.99, which is substantially better than the EURUSD performance of 2.16. The sample size consists of 113 trades, which is enough to infer a reasonable expectation of performance.

Equity curve of the scalper EA on GBPUSD for 2011.

Equity curve of the scalper EA on GBPUSD for 2011.

The final test is “does it make money when including trading costs?” The answer is yes. On a 2.5 pip spread, the total trading costs of standard lots on 113 trades is $25/lot * 113 lots (trades) = $2,825. That number is substantially less than the raw profit of $5,360. It makes sense to trade this strategy.

The final step of walking forward unfortunately doesn’t offer enough data points to draw a conclusion. It only placed 13 trades for the entire year. It broke even.

USDCAD scalping stats

EA scalper, USDCAD, 0.9% banwidth

Performance for USDCAD 2011 with a band of 0.9%.

Equity curve of USDCAD for 2011, EA Scalper

Equity curve of USDCAD for 2011

USDJPY is a bad idea

The frequency graph for the USDJPY looks much, much different than the other currencies. Instead of being steep and mostly flat, it’s more like free falling and perfectly flat. The massive size of the tail and the severe contrast between the steep and flat portions led me to believe, correctly, that trading USDJPY would not be a good idea.

The frequency of various distances of the price from the 200 SMA on USDJPY.

The frequency of various distances of the price from the 200 SMA on USDJPY.

Although the areas near the inflection point are indeed the most profitable, the profit factor for USDJPY plummets to slightly above 1.0. When trading costs are factored in, it doesn’t make sense to trade.

Scalper EA USDJPY 2011

Trade performance for the scalper EA for USDJPY in 2011

Related

Have you read the article explaining how and why the scalper EA works?

If you have any suggestions on how to make the rules apply to more currency pairs or instruments, then please share in the comments section below.

Filed Under: Trading strategy ideas Tagged With: eurusd, expert advisor, GBPUSD, scalper, scalping, USDCAD, USDJPY

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