My demo account at Forex.com was only valid for 30 days which ended sometime early last week. I went on ahead and set up a live account and initiated a small position going long the Euro vs. the US Dollar. I’m aware this Friday at 5:30 AM PST there is a ‘high impact’ economic announcement of the US Consumer Price Index. This was the event I thought I would have to be extra careful about since the last couple of events have sent the US Dollar up.
I have just been monitoring the high impact events, not the low to medium ones which I now know can be a mistake. On Tuesday June’s Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) number was released at 7:00 AM PST and it was far better than expected. This report showed that job openings in June outpaced hiring which might encourage the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates. The JOLTS number is supposed to be “low impact,” but because it was far larger than expected it boosted the Dollar vs the Euro. The JOLTS number came in at 6,163,000 vs the expectation of only 5,170,000.
After 7:00 AM PST release for the next hour or so the Euro dropped over 75 pips. Fortunately for me I know my limitations and my position in the Euro was very, very small – my leverage was only 1:1.2. I utilized a stop loss order and limited my total loss to less than $7.00. This is a good lesson to learn, every announcement needs to be monitored and stop loss order should be in place accordingly.