09:35am  ~  A late start for me today which is a throw-back from the days many years ago when I had to get up early at the start of the week to go to a ‘normal’ job. I can now please myself, so Mondays are just an extension of the weekend for me now.  I have a few odd jobs to do around the house today plus a cycle ride at some time together with 3 Skype calls with budding traders.  I will report back later if I manage to do any chart watching as well, although early Monday morning is usually a time for the markets to sort themselves out before they get going for the week. I’ll have a look a bit later on, before lunch perhaps.

The Dow Jones 30 is now hovering around a support/resistance level at 15700 after a generally bearish last week of January and the S&P500 seems to have also hit a December support also. Over the weekend the official China Manufacturing PMI numbers came in weaker as expected so we will probably see a bearish slant to trading in Europe and the U.S. today. This week has a host of US data with some high impact releases out every day so a roller-coaster ride may be coming up for traders on both sides of the Atlantic.  Brent Oil hit a significant resistance level last week and is now heading towards support at 105.50 so watch out for trading opportunities at that level.

10:35am  ~  I’ve just done a pile of emails and I’m now going off on a cycle ride for an hour or so. When I am back I shall have a look at my charts and see if the markets have settled down yet.

12:15pm  ~  I’m back from my exercise session and I can see a possible ‘short’ trade opportunity setting up on my Brent Oil chart – I will report back soon with the outcome.

13:05pm  ~  That Brent Oil position I mentioned earlier is on and I am at break-even at the moment, the stop loss is 16 pips. I am also in a Gold trade (long)

16:25pm  ~ Right – I’m now out of both trades as 1) they’ve both done ok and 2) some friends have just arrived to plan a skiing trip next week and then we’re all out for Chinese New Year.  My first trade on Brent oil has ended with a profit of +50 pips and the Gold trade which was a long position with entry just after 12:30pm came in at +154 pips.  They were both trades using my trendFX collection of strategies and I will send over details soon to students who have that system manual.

Daily Target Reached ?   YES  (+306 pips)  See Tuesday’s Trading Diary for evening results