Sold 350 HGD.TO @ 10.84, Profit +2%

China not-so-surprised the market (their delayed Treasury report was a hint) with a 0.25% rate hike overnight (WSJ: China Raises Interest Rates). The US Dollar shot up, precious metals took a big hit. I close my gold short soon after the TSX market open to collect some quick profit. Rinse and repeat.

I did mention that this trade is a short term swing. I bought this Horizons BetaPro Gold Bear Plus (HGD.TO), a leveraged gold short, on Friday and unloaded it this Tuesday. I fought against my greed to hold just a little longer. But the ascending support line on gold is too obvious to ignore (Fig. 1). Thus I closed this short term position with this 5%+ gap up while the market is still deciding what to do.

Furthermore, I noticed the equities market are holding rather well at the open. S&P500 held onto 1170 price level. Asian markets were marginally green overnight. And even the CAC in Europe is fighting an intraday low as the North American markets open. Thus, the sky is not falling just yet.

I figured it would take more omph to push this market further down as we are indeed in a strong bullish move. At the very least I am expecting some retaliation from the bulls. This can’t be this easy for the bears, can it?

Gold

Net profit for this trade is ($10.84 – $10.27) * 350 = $199.50 – $9.90 commission = $189.60 = 2% of account.

Sold 400 VEN.TO @ 10.70, Breakeven

I’m out all my Ventana Gold (VEN.TO) position. This thing is losing steam despite gold prices hitting record high seemingly on a daily basis. VEN.TO made another attempt to break $11.00 resistance level at the open but it quickly reversed (Figure 1). I upped my stop order at the open on this third attempt because I don’t want to be holding it if it fails for the third time.

I’ll just sit and wait for a while to see how this one goes. Recent low at $10.40 is the support to watch. Coincidentally, the 50 daily MA just crossed over the 200 MA today for a classic bullish signal (Fig. 2). A contrarian correction (downward) to bleed off overbought condition is in play, perhaps?

Ventana Gold (VEN.TO) intraday

Ventana Gold (VEN.TO) daily

Loss is ($10.70 – $10.70) * 400 = $0 – $14.85 commission = -$14.85 = 0.15% of account. I am just handing money over to my discount broker Questrade these days.

Sold 350 VEN.TO @ 10.50 (Profit +0.8%), Re-Bought 250 VEN.TO @ 10.67

My Ventana Gold Corp (VEN.TO) stop got filled yesterday afternoon as gold price took a dive (Figure 1) before the Bank of England minute today. However, the support at 10.50 look very promising as VEN.TO made a couple of successful long tail test of that level in the last 24 hours (Fig. 2). Seeing that the BoE has blatantly admitted to support the bandwagon on more quantitative easing (along with the FED), the bullishness in gold is written on the wall. As such, I am re-entering my VEN.TO position this morning with a smaller amount of shares.

New stop is a close of VEN.TO below 10.50. Volatility is expected to be high. So I am giving it some intraday leeway to move. A hard stop is set at 10.20. Risk is thus ($10.67 – $10.20) * 250 = $117.50 + $9.90 commission = $127.40 = 1.3% of account.

For the record, previous entries were at 9.74 and 10.85. My stop at 10.50 was too tight.

I am admittedly being quite aggressive here. Let’s wait and see if it pays off.

Gold

Ventana Gold Corp (VEN.TO)

Sold 4 MFC 11JAN Puts 14.00 @ 1.74, Mark 12.96, Loss 0.1%

S&P500 managed to bounce back from below 1130 support. It is confirmed by EUR/USD’s rise and treasury’s gap down (TLT) today. I’m not going to argue with the market. So I am ditching my short for Manulife Financial (MFC.TO) while it is still testing its 13.00 resistance at the open.

12.60 is the 50% Fibonacci retracement level for MFC. It made a textbook perfect bounce on it (Fig. 1). Also, it’s Friday today, so I’d rather not have the time decay eat more out of my premium by holding over the weekend.

Loss for this trade is ($1.74 – $1.70) * 100 * 4 = $16 – $27.90 = -$11.90 = -0.10%.

Now that I am out of my short position, watch the market tank without me on board.

Update: MFC and the market managed an impressive rally today. MFC closed at 13.15. I am glad that I followed my own strategy. I guess I do make good timing once in a blue moon.

Manulife Financial (MFC.TO)

Closed USDCAD short @ 1.06525, breakeven

It seem that USDCAD isn’t about to die just yet. My USDCAD short got stopped out at breakeven this morning. In fact, the pair is still struggling around the descending resistance line as shown in Figure 1. It made a higher low so I won’t be surprised if it cracks higher.

USDCAD, 4-hour

The reason why I took this trade was that the opportunity seemed too good to pass on based on my analysis at the time. I always keep an eye on the market even when I’m not trading. Although the basic setup remains intact, the opportunity isn’t so fantastic that I couldn’t say no anymore.

Anyway, I shouldn’t be wasting time managing a minuscule trade. Back to staring at codes.