GBPJPY - Price bounced off the 200-day SMA and headed higher

GBP/JPY Technical Analysis - price has been choppy throughout 2014, but we can see a bullish bias to this madness. In fact,*there has been higher lows and a fresh high on the year at 175.36 in July. But after that, price have been mainly bearish. Price came down to test the 200-day simple moving average for the first time November 2012, during August.

GBP/JPY Daily

The breakout however did not extend, and last week, price immediately fell back failing to break above 174. By the end of the week price tagged the 171.00 handle but closed just above the 200-day SMA around 171.35. *So here we have a market at the cusp of shifting from a neutral-bullish mode to at least a neutral-bearish mode, and perhaps a bearish mode for the medium-term.

The GBP/JPY is now at the cross road, wish some short-term bearish bias. I think if price returns back above 173.00, the bearish outlook should be shelved, and the market is back to neutral-bullish mode. Note that this would push price back above the 100- and 50-day SMAs.

Trade Idea:

So, if we are to take a bearish stance here, we might want to wait for a rally to the 172.50-173.00 area. Looking at the 4H chart, this would mean a pullback to a key resistance cluster. We should also monitor the 4H RSI – if it stalls at 60 while price also stalls in the 172.20-172.50 area, we can anticipate a bearish swing.

GBP/JPY 4H

In a reward to risk assessment, let’s say the stop-loss is 173.30, while the entry is at 172.30. That is 100-pips of risk. The target would conservatively be the 170.50 area, near the August-low. That would yield a 180-pip reward. This trade idea thus has a 1.8:1 reward to risk profile.