Hope you’re well.

It’s been a good week for me. Maybe it’s just the weather, but things just seem to have been going extremely well this last week.

Last of Wednesday, I went to see Derren Brown, that magician/ hypnotist famous for messing with people’s minds. I’m a big fan of his shows, but was still a little nervous when we got to the theatre. We’d received a phone call that we’d have to move seats because they were filming for a DVD in our allotted row, so we were moved to the first row.

Great! We thought. But then we became a little suspicious and paranoid that it was one of his tricks to see how we react to an unusual situation. He’d probably already implanted lots of subtle suggestions that would make us react in a certain way.

Thankfully we weren’t picked on, and enjoyed the show immensely. During the interval he asked people to place questions about themselves in sealed black envelopes with only their initials, level and row number on it. The second half then involved Derren guessing the questions in these envelopes and who had asked them. From the small information on the back of the envelope he’d guess the person’s name, their age, their question and a whole bunch of other personal details.

Incredible.

I can roughly guess how he was able to guess certain things. Derren has a phenomenal ability to remember stacks of information so I’m sure he’d be able to pick up names, birthdays and the day you were born (he got that right even when the people themselves had no clue) from ticket master. How he got all the other stuff was beyond me.

One woman’s question in the black sealed envelope that had never been out of sight for the whole interval was about the dream she’d had the previous night. Derren was able to guess it involved a certain Alan Titchmarsh.

If anyone has any clues about how he does it, I’m all ears.

On the trading front, it has also been a happy week.

Forex markets seem to have become less spikey with moves more pronounced. UFXP and many of the other forex systems I’ve been looking at had a very good week.

Members have been sending through their experiences with various trading systems that they’ve been looking at. Here’s a summary of the info I’ve received lately:

Members’ feedback on six trading systems

Omni Trader: I’ve no experience of this system, but other members have been using it with mixed results. It seems to be a decent system, but with too many signals. The key, it seems is to filter these signals some how. As ever, I’m grateful for the feedback this member has provided.

Members’ feedback: “Dave In your e-mail, dated 20th May, you asked for feedback on Omni Trader. If you want to know about every signal under the sun, Omni Trader is excellent. They provide you with a few strategies to get you going, but then you are expected to write your own. This is fine if you like programming, but most traders would prefer to spend their time trading!

The key to success is finding the signals that are relevant to the shares that you are interested in. This is hit and miss, although you can go back into the past history of any specific share. I now use Omni Trader as a back-up system rather than expecting it to find good buys and sells.”

www.10-minute-forex-wealth-builder.com: Recent market volatility doesn’t seem to be doing this system many favours, making it hard to specify entry points. According to the feedback I’ve had, there’s much room for improvement.

Magical Forex: Unfortunately, the magical forex system appears to be less Derren Brown and more Tommy Cooper. The feedback I’ve received from testers has been tepid at best.

Here’s what one member had to say: “The manual advises to use 2 Exponential Moving Averages, 15 EMA + 40 EMA, to identify the trend. Alex admits there is nothing new about using these to identify the trend. The “Stochastic RSI” Indicator is used much has the basic Stochastic Indictor is used, buy when indicator moves up above 20 and sell when indicator moved down below 80. Alex explains the basics about stop/loses, trailing stops, Fibonacci, money management and different trading personalities. All similar to what you may read in any trading manual, nothing new.”

60-minute Trader: I’m extremely grateful to one member for who’s performed some diligent analysis on 60 minute Trader. The upshot is that it appears to work ish. The have been some long losing runs interspersed with some winners. It may eek out a small profit, but so far it seems to be falling short of the easy money that is promoted.

FX Official: One member has been using this forex advisory service and I’ve just joined myself to take a good look. I’ll report back in more detail soon. The feedback I’ve had is that this is a good service but Jason who runs the service can get into the moves a little too early so you are best to wait to see if the market turns in the predicted direction then jump on board.

ConceptFX: This is a more a request for information actually. Many members have been sent information on this service and a few have gone along to meet the guys. I’ve been badgering them for a trial or access to further information and hope they will crumble soon. Until then I’d be interested to hear if anyone’s gone ahead and purchased membership.

Good work on the feedback, keep it coming!

My trades

A very good week for UFXP with some big moves coming in. I’m continuing to get the best results with USD/ GBP and EUR/ USD. I find USD/JPY a bit too squirrelly, but that’s just my perception, other members appear to be doing well with it. There was one 100 pip trade on the Euro that made my week and cable (USD/GBP) was nicely consistent with a string of 30+ pippers. I’ve been adding my own filters a bit more like the 60 MA. The same guy who suggested this also contacted me to say he prefers using a PTP strength of 6 so I’ve been experimenting with that too.

Elsewhere, for the first time in a while I managed to catch a decent move on the emini S&P 500 futures. I’ve been leaning towards the down side for a while but kept on getting small losses, scratch trades, or the odd small profit. Round numbers can be important in any market and when the ES (emini S&P) rejected 1400 again on Friday I took a nibble. Coulda woulda shoulda taken a bigger bite and got in earlier than I did, but I’m pleased with the result and being able to sit on my hands long enough to override my profit taking instincts. I closed at the end of the day because I don’t like holding over night after a big move. As I write this, the markets are lower again, but you have to close your trades some time.

This week’s hot trading buttons

It’s already been a busy week on the currency front with the Pound hitting reverse gear and traders now pricing in more rate hikes not rate cuts. BOE Governor King with have spoken by the time you read this and the Bank of Canada releases their rate decision at 2PM today. The week’s hottest ticket is potentially the US retail sales data on Thursday. If the US consumer starts to seriously tighten their wallet, there could be wide reaching international consequences.

Trading wisdom

“The financial markets generally are unpredictable. So that one has to have different scenarios… The idea that you can actually predict what’s going to happen contradicts my way of looking at the market.” George Soros.