08:35am (CET)  ~  Hopefully the broadband out here is going to be more reliable today, it was only on for an hour or so yesterday resulting in no trading or Skyping and very little emailing.  I did have a look at some charts late last night and noticed that I didn’t miss much.  I do not expect much to be happening with regard to price movements on the charts I regularly watch but I will glance at them from time time while I’m here in my makeshift study – the builders should get my proper one finished by the end of next week. It’s back to the UK for us early next week as I have a couple of meetings on Tuesday so I’ll also book some flights, internet willing.

As I’ve mentioned yesterday, traders are sitting on their hands – marking time until the Bank Of England and European Central Bank announce their rates today and then there’s the U.S. employment numbers tomorrow. Expectations are for the ECB to cut the already paltry rate even further (down to a tenth of one percent) and maybe even into  negative numbers.  The Frankfurt-based institution is also widely expected to cut the rate it pays on deposits from the current rate of zero to around 0.1% meaning it would charge them to hold money on deposit.  Although many commentators agree that the EU has passed its crisis phase, there are concerns of a lengthy period of deflation, marked by falling wages and shop prices – inflation in the zone is currently running at just 0.5% well below the ECB’s target of 2%.

Despite a larger drop in weekly crude inventories than was expected, the overall supplies remained near record high levels which was seen as a sign of declining oil demand so this pushed the WTI crude prices 39 cents lower to $102.40 a barrel. Gold is still out of favour with investors as all eyes are on the high level of equities and yet again yesterday it was the case as it tried unsuccessfully to move above the psychologically important $1250.00  -  it  finished down $1.2 at $1243.6.

09:10am  ~  Off for a cycle ride with a neighbour, we’re taking a track across and over the mountain that’s behind the house rather than a road route.

11:05am  ~  Back home now, doing some emails and chart watching – as expected the markets are fairly flat in the run-up to BOE & ECB rate announcements in the next few hours.  Having said that, the Gold price seems to be rising gradually so there may be a quick trade there before lunchtime.

13:00pm  ~  The Gold price has risen sufficiently for a trendFX trade to be triggered, I am in the market ‘long’ with a 14 pip stop loss.

13:30pm  ~ The trade hit it’s target a few minutes ago, so I am out with +14 pips.  There’s going to be a fairly sizeable reaction I should imagine to the ECB rate announcement in 15 minutes so it would be foolhardy to still be a position then.

23:05pm  ~  I have been out for the afternoon but when I got back here at 6pm there was no broadband again, so no trading for me this evening.