My first trading job. Working as a junior on an FX flow desk. March 2009 Bernancke is about to make a statement.
I am the junior and look after the commodity currencies (AUD/USD, USD/CAD etc) but, my boss and the other guys decided Bernancke would do nothing and so they would prefer to go out drinking than stay for the FOMC. They leave me in charge of the book for the first time. Im keen to impress but my risk parameters dictate I cant run anything about 1 million.
6pm a client calls in and buys 30million USD off me, selling me EUR. I am long EURUSD at 129.76... I wait half an hour and we have traded through resistance and 1.30, trading 1.3031. I figure i will cover it just before the announcement HOWEVER just then CNBC show Bernancke coming out, before his speech and he is bright red, and sweating. I get a gut feel something is going to happen here.
I think, you know what, if he does announce QE this thing is going to fly, and if he doesn't im about support at 1.3 anyway. So i put a stop in at 1.2984 and hold on.
SO ANNOUNCES QE! EURUSD goes from 1.3031-1.345 in about 3 minutes! I cover for a cool profit of just under 2 million Euros! not bad for a guy who was targeted on making 50k per month!