Shutdown Forex Account; Looking at Next Steps

For those of you who have been following my posts in the past, on June 4 I closed all of my open trades and shut down my FXDD account. I had reached a certain equity on February 25, just about 3 weeks prior to when Covid-19 struck North America in mid-March and shut down a large part of society. On that fateful day of March 18, my daily confirmation report showed that my account equity was down USD345K. No, this is not a misprint!!! I was down well over 1/3 of a million USD!!! Then on June 4, I managed to see my account return to within 3K of my previous equity of February 25! At that instant, I liquidated everything and then requested a withdrawal of all the funds in my account. The very next day, I received the USD wire into my bank account in Canada. I immediately wired the entire amount to my stock broker account. The full sum of USD is loaded and ready to buy CAD as soon as I pull the trigger.

Although I never reached the target goal I had in mind for my forex account, I felt that this was the right time to shut down the account for a few reasons. (1) I had been through a roller coaster ride and felt that things were very unpredictable. I wanted to get out before things turned for the worse and while I was ahead. (2) The recent strength of the USD vs. the CAD made the move desirable. It hasn’t been that often that you see the USD worth over 30 or 35% more than the CAD. If I planned to physically buy CAD with my USD, these are good times to do it. (3) The opportunities in the stock market these days are extensive. I want to have my funds available to invest as the economy makes a comeback. It will happen, we just don’t know when… (4) I have heard all the stories about the dangers of having your money in some brokers - FXDD being no exception. Since they are not FDIC insured or insured by some government agency, you just never know. What would happen if they went belly-up and my funds suddenly disappeared? Now, it wasn’t likely to happen, but you just never know. My investment experience with FXDD was A1 and never an issue. I have heard various stories out there but my experience was very good.

During mid-March, the USDCAD hit a high of 1.466895. Unfortunately, my funds were not available at that time! Right now, the rate is sitting at just over 1.36. I have a nice chunk of $$ ready to go. I am a Canadian living in Canada. I would prefer to trade USD on the NYSE and NASDAQ, however, I doubt that the USD will be worth in excess of 30% for too long into the future. So, why not buy CAD while it is so cheap?! The TSX is a decent market to trade on. I can always buy USD back if it drops in value moving forward.

Anyway, I thought I would share my situation with those of you who had been reading some of my posts. Like I said, I never reached my ultimate goal but there were just too many signals telling me to shut it down and look at the other opportunities available. So, now I am closely watching the USDCAD. Hopefully, it will take a charge up over 1.40 again soon!

Any opinions or ideas on the outlook for USDCAD? I am all ears and eyes!!!

Hi,backtesting strategy in similar market behavior can help make decisons. Regards Greg

Interesting story, any tips on how you got your bankroll to $345k in the first place ? :slight_smile:

I worked extremely hard in the education field abroad for about 10 years and was smart investing (stock market). I saw opportunity to really do well in 2010 with the USDJPY. I found it impossible to stick to my long-term game plan as a result of ‘over-investing’ and ‘volatiity’ in the forex market. So it became a 10-year battle of ups and downs like a rollercoaster. I managed to get out when I did rather than risk staying in it longer. Like I said, for me there were too many reasons to get out rather than stay in the game at this point.

The bottom line is that I knew how to make money in those 10 years abroad. I also knew how to protect it. I was buying USD much faster than I could spend it. I have been waiting for the time when that USD would come in handy. Now seems to be one of those times…