the 3500

Many years ago, I burned up an FX trading account with Oanda. I left a mere £70 in the account as a reminder of my shame.

Well, I’ve recently been playing around with this account, and have doubled the equity. That’s a one hundred per cent increase in a matter of months … damn, I’m good*. There’s no magic involved here: I’m short gold and generally trade from the long USD side because that’s my predisposition, hinder me that it may! Anyway what’s the point here? Oh yes, I recently added a small long USD/CHF to the book because this trade always pays out a little in interest. Alas, to my surprise it was carry negative. This is shocking because for as many years as I have been in the FX mkts, USD/CHF has always paid out on the long side. I guess times change.

The word ‘idiot’ is derived from the Greek ‘idiōtēs’, meaning a ‘person lacking professional skill’. I qualify as a first class idiot for not paying any attention to US and Swiss policy rates crossing over.

* Sarcastic self-congratulation.