08:45am  ~  After a nice break away and a day of errands and odd jobs around the house for me yesterday it’s now time to get back to normal life after the Christmas holidays.

There was another negative close in the US last night, the third one in a row, but it does not look as if it will translate into a weaker open in Europe this morning despite recent economic data from both sides of the Atlantic coming in slightly mixed yesterday.

The most likely reason for these falls is that we are seeing some profit taking after the strong gains seen since the 18th of December, and also reaction to the Fed tapering announcement, ahead of tomorrow’s potentially market-shaking FOMC minutes, and Friday’s latest US Non Farm Payroll numbers.

Today is expected to be a fairly uneventful day with regard to data with German retail sales data for November, unemployment data for December, and Eurozone CPI set to provide a distraction, and none expected to surprise significantly one way or the other.

Gold ended broadly where it started yesterday and also hit a major moving average resistance on the daily charts, so it looks as though we may have a down-day today. The next week’s movement will depend on how the equity markets move and also demand in Asia as we approach the Chinese new year.

10:20am  ~  I have a few errands to do but will be back here at lunchtime so I’ll sit down with some charts then and see what trading opportunities present themselves.

13:05pm  ~  I am in a trade – my first of 2014, it’s a ‘short’ on my Gold chart with a stop loss of 41 pips using strategy 3 from my trendFX collection.  I can also see a UTB set-up starting to emerge on the WTI chart so I will let you know what happens there later.

14:45pm  ~  Quick update:  the WTI possibility I mentioned earlier did come off and I got in around an hour ago – and I’m already out with a profit of 40 pips !  My Gold trade is still doing ok and looks like the selling momentum is carrying on for the time being.

16:30pm  ~  I am now out of my Gold position with a profit of +104 pips.  Overall a nice start to my trading year.

19:15pm  ~  I have been watching my S&P500 chart to see if there are any Trade With A Day Job opportunities but so far nothing has emerged. I am off out for the evening in 15 minutes so I shall turn off my chart in a minute.

Daily Target Reached ?  YES (+144 pips)