I think you have to be careful about news trading. There are perhaps two different approaches. The first is to generally follow quality publications and relevant articles and form your own opinions, and the second is to follow (or subscribe to) the trading recommendations of market analysts that do the research for you.
It is important to remember that news/data releases are usually “after the event” in that the market will have already absorbed the general market consensus on what the results should be. Of course, it is not possible to know the details in advance and therefore trading individual releases is quite akin to gambling.
Also, one economic data release or stated opinion does not make a trend and can, in fact, often contradict the general direction of a currency trend. This means that trading fundamentals should really be a long term positional type trade that also requires larger stop loss tolerances to avoid being stopped out prematurely by frenzy trading following such “reverse” type releases.
If one follows a market analyst trading recommendations then it is worth remembering that no one is right all the time and blindly following all recommendations is not likely to produce a good result in the long term. However, these may help if added to one’s own analysis by highlighting information otherwise overlooked or by identifying possible support/resistance levels. However, the risk is that the more sources you listen to the more confusing the overall picture will become.
Technical analysis is a very good method of measuring what the majority of market participants are actually doing and, if you can successfully identify the direction, then you can simply join in - then the next issue is where to get out! Technicals again work better on a longer timeframe since markets can happily move up and down 50/100 pips without any particular identifiable reason or purpose - these can sometimes be tradeable but are not based on any kind of news except perhaps as temporary knee-jerk reactions to low-rated news releases or comments.
Maybe a rational approach could be to:
- Build your own view of a currency pair based on quality news articles
- Look for confirmation of your view in longer term chart analysis
- Trade you view on entry/exit levels from shorter TF’s depending on your stoploss tolerance, willingness to leave trades overnight and longer and whether to leave trades through significant news releases like NFP’s
Just a few thoughts…