I decided to do another trade last night after all, and promptly lost another USD$80 - the price had been bouncing up and down and I thought I could sell at the top of a bounce and claw back some of my previous loss. Of course, it then stopped bouncing and went up!

This morning my wife's account was activated after her A$1000 deposit had been processed. The AUD started a rapid drop immediately after the latest quarterly CPI figure came out at 11am - only a 0.1% rise for the quarter. This means that inflation seems to have moderated, so it's less likely that the Reserve Bank will raise interest rates next month after all. It was interesting to see that this news had exactly opposite effects on the AUD and the stock market:



Although after the initial spike up the market drifted back down, whereas the drop in the AUD was more prolonged. DW put in a SELL order for AUD$100,000 (costing $1,000 for the 1% margin) when the Aussie dollar started to slide, but, although the order said "executed" it didn't appear in her FX positions listing. After checking with CMC markets help desk it turned out that her bank had deducted $1.50 fee for the BPay transfer, so her trading account only had A$998.50 available. Due to insufficient funds her $1000 SELL order was automatically cancelled! By the time she'd worked this all out, and decided to trade a $50,000 position instead, the drop in the AUD had bottomed out. DW was quite annoyed that she missed out on a potential $250 gain. She made a series of small trades this evening, but there was no clear trend and she lost on several trades. Her most recent trade is making money as the AUD recovers - so she may break even on today's trades.