Trading currency

Assessment Brief/ Task
The detailed requirements for this task are as follows:
You will be given a notional US$250,000 which is to be used to trade on the FOREX futures market. The objective of the assignment is so that you gain an understanding of what factors make the currency markets move and also what is a significant movement in terms of profit and loss.

You are restricted to the following markets and you should select just ONE currency to trade:-

Futures traded on the IMM:
• Euro/US$
• British Pound/US$
• Japanese Yen/US$

You are also restricted to TEN trades in total (5 open and 5 closing). This is a maximum, not a minimum. When you change “direction” or increase the size of a position you must close the existing trades first. This is to enable it to be easier to verify the accuracy of your trades.
You should only trade the March 2015 contracts. You may begin trading at any time. All trading must finish on or before Friday 20th December 2014 and you must trade for a minimum period of 10 working days (defined as “marking to market” on 10 occasions, i.e. having 10 settlement prices). Your written work must then be submitted (to the school office in MX Building) by Friday 17th January 2015. Please refer to ‘What should be included in the report?’ for more information on how to structure your work.
You are advised to spend some time researching the assignment and perhaps “paper trade” for a short time before embarking on your actual trades. If you haven’t begun trading by Monday 8th of December 2014 then you will be deemed to have failed the assignment as you will then have insufficient time to undertake 10 days of