A good week with profitable trades in gold and silver. The week did come with a small loss and missed an opportunity in the currency pairing USD CAD. Also, we were out of the money for much of the week in crude oil only to grab a brief break-even buyback. Overall, a good week.

Silver daily chart: each bar represents one day’s worth of trading. A black bar means the price closed lower than the open. Each candle shows the open and close price and the wick (either top or bottom) shows how high or how low the price went between the open and close times.

We shorted silver at the red arrow, and we bought back that short at the green arrow. Just over 80 pips of profit for us; a pip is the smallest upwards or downwards movement. (In stocks and shares it is called a tick.)

Gold daily chart:

We went short at the red arrow and for a profit at the green arrow. Gold trades less than silver per ounce and therefore our gold movement this week represented only 30 pips. Offset, however, by the trader’s equation: based on probability, our profit target, how far away our stop is and the representative amount we’re prepared to lose.

USD CAD daily chart:

Over the last few weeks we went long at the larger green arrow and took our profits at the larger red arrow.  We went long again a few days later at the smaller green arrow only to be stopped out of the trade (within a couple of pips!) at the smaller red arrow for a small loss. I then missed the subsequent move up. That is trading. Did I set my exit stop at the wrong place? Maybe. Hindsight is a wonderful thing, and a few more pips below the moving average would have been sensible. But my overall judgement was correct, in that the price was going to go up – and I take confidence from that.

Crude oil daily chart:

My best trade of the week without making any profit. Let me explain. We entered short at the red arrow and were out of the money all week to the tune of 200 pips at one point. We bought back our short at break-even price at the green arrow. Best trade because although we were out of the money we did not reach our stop position and we managed a break-even price. Ready for the next one!