The Fundamental FOREX Blog

On Wednesday 07-22-09 at 8:30 AM ET, the CAD Retails Salews MoM and Core Retail Sales MoM was released.

I am going to post on this report again since the last report release was good for a profitable “scalp” and so was this release.

For more in depth information about last months CAD Retail Sales MoM and Core Retail Sales MoM, click on “Previous Post:”

Canada’s Statistics Canada release their monthly report of  “Core Retail Sales” M/M which  excludes the sale of autos, and “Retails Sales” M/M which represents total consumer spending. These 2 reports come about 50 days after the months end.

This time, the “Retail Sales” report paints a more positive picture for the Canadian economy, the previous report was -0.8% with a forecast of +0.5%, which would be a increase in over-all retail sales – both report forecast show no conflict that traders will have to mull over, unless of course one of the “actual“ reports is negative and the other positive.

A one minute USD/CAD chart

I was able to get the report about 12 seconds after the scheduled release.

Here is what transpired – I monitored the USD/CAD currency pair and did a video capture starting about 5 minutes prior to the 2 reports being released as well as 5 minutes after release. So I am able to accurately relate what was going on. You can follow along on the chart above.

#1. Currency traders appear to be clearing their trades in anticipation of the report release, or, here is a thought, are the traders loading up “short” believing that the report will be good for the Canadian dollar as “forecast” and they want to be in the market when the report comes out, avoiding “broker slippage” — a gamble to be sure, but one that would have paid off, big time!

My “broker spread” at this time was 4.4 PIPS until 45 seconds prior to the report, when it increased to 10 PIPS.

#2. About 30 seconds after the report my “broker spread” decreased to 4.4 PIPS.

As experience has taught me, I now wait for a “retrace” of a fast moving spike before committing to a trade.

#3. I waited until the second minute and it appeared that the market was going to continue down as it should. About a minute and 14 seconds into the report I executed my “sell market order” with a “stop/loss” of 20 PIPS.

#4. After about 4 minutes and 40 seconds into the report I exited my trade with a 4.8 PIP win.

There were 3 other currency pairs that I monitored which had some good movement – GBP/CAD, CAD/JPY and EUR/CAD.

A one minute GBP/CAD chart going down about 50 PIPS over an hour.

A one minute EUR/CAD chart going down about 45 PIPS over a 55 minute period.

A one minute CAD/JPY chart going up about 35 PIPS in about 40 minutes - not the best pair to trade at this time.

The next release for these 2 reports will be Monday 08-24-09 at 8:30AM ET.

Stay tuned!