Counter-trend trades after NFP

If you read my post from yesterday, you know that fading moves is the only way to trade with consistency. Today, NFP surprised to the upside printing -36k, causing a huge rally in stocks. I usually fade all news and today was not an exception, however it resulted in a loss, because I miscalculated my entry (I wasn't looking at my H1 charts because I had too many other windows opened :/). Anyway, G/J rallied 250 pips after the announcement. Seeing this big move, we would be looking to short it at strong S/R levels. I took two short trades here.

First, we had a hourly resistance at 136.73, quite obvious from the hourly chart. I didn't take this trade, but it would have been good for 20 pips. Second, we had a beautiful bounce at 137.00 (round number), good for 40+ pips (I got out after 20).

Third trade was on G/U, when they faked a breakout above 1.5130 (hourly resistance) and then sold off like there's no tomorrow. (I managed a +2 trade here, because I wanted to get out quickly and avoid extra risk).

Notice how a 20 pip stop was a safe play in all three cases. Now seeing this huge move to the upside, how many of us would consider going against it? Probably not many. However, even in these crazy market conditions, fading over-extended moves is a usable strategy. Buying the strength today would have made money, but only because we a had strong intraday trend in place. On most days, no such things happen.

-Tyler