Throughout time nations have always been keen on getting a bit bigger or a bit richer, through fair means or foul. The Romans built an empire based on an army that followed orders; centuries later the Germans used the same model but replaced tortoises and catapults with panzers and stukas. The British, Dutch and Spanish were subtler in the 1700-1800s using more politically correct ‘explorers’ and pilgrims, then sending out armies to protect their interests.

More recently the Germans wised up and figured that they could conquer Europe with a phoney Treaty and the compliance of bumbling idiots in high places. But the group that win the ‘More cunning than a fox with a degree in cunningness (careful with the spelling there)’ award are the Sovereign Wealth Funds (SWF).

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To tell the truth I’m starting the week absolutely cream-crackered. A social life and lack of intelligence meant that I was up till the early hours on Sunday watching England book their tickets for another week in France.

Despite that, I’ve been hitting the trade buttons today. I bought USD/JPY and followed that up with a flier on Resolution-Yep, an equity bet!

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Falling behind with your bills? Need help with your debt?
What’s that old banker’s saying?
“If you owe £100 it’s your problem; if you owe £100 million it’s our problem.”

Let me introduce you to the shady world of central bankers; the guys who are allowed to print money; the lenders of last resort.

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I’ll be honest; I’m not really feeling at one with the forex markets at the moment. I’m not losing badly; in fact I’m still making a bit, but only with scrappy low quality trades. Having just written about the need to plan trades and assess the risk/reward ratio, it doesn’t feel right just ‘goal-hanging’ and trying to nick the odd £20.

This morning GBP/USD showed a good downtrend line with a range just shy of 100 pips; an ideal trading scenario, yet I seemed to be scrambling around just to make £66.

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This morning was OK, but I should have seen the writing on the wall. Looking back on the chart for GBP/USD there was one good chance to go long today. I went long on three occasions and ended up minus £53 on the day.

Sterling’s rally yesterday evening, on the back of Merv King’s warning not to expect a panic cut in UK rates, took GBP/USD close to the recent highs. Recently it’s not been too clever to buy Sterling above $2.04, which always makes me a bit twitchy when I try it.

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I don’t usually give tips, but here’s one. Take the morning off. Today is that time of the month when the markets get all worked up about US employment, with the release of the Payroll data. Admittedly there’s been one of two other distractions over the past couple of weeks, but usually traders are wary of trading ahead of the 1.30 figures. The Payroll data is a collection of figures and together they are treated as probably the key data each month, perhaps along with the inflation figures. I’ve a bit of time on my hands so I’ll list the main figures, together with what the market is looking for:

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OK, OK. It’s not going away so I’m going to have to muse over the sub-prime debacle, but how can I make it interesting?

I know, think of one of your mates, he’s probably the stalwart of the rugby team or the life and soul of your group, a really good mate, but you wouldn’t lend him a tenner. Well, you might coz he’s a good mate but you wouldn’t expect to see it again. He’s not a crook; he’s just hopeless with money. It might be that he’s a self-employed sofa-warmer or just that he treats his credit card like a gift from the benefits office, but he ain’t gonna get a mortgage.

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“Spiderpig, Spiderpig. Does whatever a Spiderpig does.” Yes, I saw the Simpsons movie at the weekend.

After last week’s question on support and resistance lines there are lots of examples across the currency markets using daily charts, including $Yen, £Yen, Aussie US, Kiwi US. Bear in mind though, that these aren’t always exact; there are often ‘dangly bits’ where traders try and push the price through to test the market.

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Hah! I remember making the same mistake whilst a trainee fund manager years ago. The US GDP figure came out showing stronger growth than forecast at 3.4% for the second quarter which, given this morning’s trend, I thought would lead to further strengthening of the Dollar.

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Last week I read Z’s blog on trailing stop losses with a knowing grin. I tend to use a trailing stop loss, but a bit too enthusiastically and it happened again this morning. I think these crazy markets are messing with my sleep patterns coz I was down with my screens on by 5.45 this morning, and no, that’s not normal. By 7 o’clock I’d cruised through my various charts, read the papers on e-mail and dealt.

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