09:50am  ~  After a very late card evening that ended at 3am this morning, I am having a very gentle and late start to the morning.  We are off to Stansted later on to fly out to a friend’s farm in Majorca, but before that I have some Skype calls and emails to respond to this morning.  I shall also switch on my charts to see if there’s any trading opportunities to take advantage of.

On the markets yesterday the U.S. Dow Jones had another positive session ending up 104 points at 15526. Good corporate earnings news  together with an understanding among traders that tapering will not start until early next year at the earliest has kept the index slowly trundling northwards for most of this week.  Over here in Europe we have had the German IFO release early this morning, which came out a bit lower than was expected. This report surveys 7ooo German businesses regarding their confidence for the near future and gives a good near-term economic outlook for the country and also the wider eurozone area. We also had preliminary UK GDP figures released which were broadly in line with expectations. Gold is still on the rise after finding chart support at $1330 as mentioned previously here – profit taking today perhaps at the end of the week ?

11:55am  ~  There’s not been much to get excited about on the markets this morning, but I have just got into a ‘short’ position on my Brent Oil chart.

12:30pm  ~  There’s more to report as the markets have livened up slightly. My earlier Brent Oil trade has been stopped out at minus 17 pips, and I’m in a long trade on the S&P500.

15:10pm  ~  I am now out of my S&P500 trade. The price was going up slowly but as I have some things to sort out before we fly out later, I have closed the trade off at +37 pips giving me exactly 20 pips for the day, right on my daily target.

Daily Target Reached ?   YES  (+20 pips)    I have been watching my charts every 30 minutes since 10 o’clock this morning – resulting in two trades.