Ok, let's talk about breakout pattern from August till now. When the price breaks out 32 pips away from the resistance or support level, it'll retract back into the previous support and resistance. This pattern repeats every day from August. In big picture, you see the price creates only short-term trends lasting a day or two; then it goes back to moving sideway. You seldom see double breakout. In this cycle, you'll have to optimize your system to catch short trends instead. For instance, you lower from MA(14) to MA(7), MA(35) to MA(20), or 32 pips breakout to 8 pips. You'll have to go back to an optimizer program and bruteforce for the best settings. Metatrader has built-in optimizer, so if you're using EA, it's the best available tool to adapt your system. (Check Phoenix EA thread for optimization guide)
Before August, if price broke out 32 pips away from resistance or support, it would go out at least 33 pips more. You would see most trends were lasting weeks or the whole month. So this cycle is best used for breakout or trend following system.
It's not clear that interest rate switches the cycle, because there're many indicators released around it. It could be weekly jobless claims, or quarterly GDP, or even Fed Chairman/President's speaking.
The reason i'm interested in interest rate because central banks the dominant price movers in forex are only interested in such statement. Weekly jobless claim or GDP, why should they care? It's not their job. What they need to do is follow the blueprint in interest rate statement from FOMC meeting. These banks has to control the price range, the so-called interventions to make their currency stays close to specified price.
