08:25am  ~  Back home now after arriving late last night, so it will be a quiet and steady move back to normality today – I may do some chart watching later this morning while looking at my stack of emails.

As you can see from the market close figures below, the European equities had quite a good session but after an initial bullish move U.S. equities were weighed down by traders taking stock of fresh sanctions against Russia over their military support in Ukraine coupled with strong rhetoric from President Obama on the subject at last – meaning both the Dow Jones and S&P 500 finished well into negative figures. Earlier in the day markets were buoyed by U.S. consumer confidence numbers which at 90.9 were the highest since just before the global recession in late 2007 but European equities opened lower this morning after being dragged down by futures trading last night although they are fighting back now and have gained back most of the losses.

Overnight, Asian markets faired much better, seemingly shrugging off the bad news in Ukraine and Gaza that troubles the rest of us  and concentrating more on their corporate earnings – both the Hang Seng and Nikkei indices ended early this morning up overall although the strangely-named Bombay “Sensitive” ended down 0.28%

The WTI Crude price was under pressure yesterday as a strong U.S. Dollar and lower equity values pushed the value down and rumours of higher stockpiles at Cushing did not help the case for a reversal of the bearish trend – are we going to see a return to the support level at $99 ?  It ended the session at $101.02, down 59 cents.  Initially Gold turned bullish yesterday on news of escalating problems regarding Israel/Gaza but soon turned bearish once U.S. equities rallied in early afternoon as you’d expect – it finished almost $6 down at $1298.80

Market Close Tuesday 29th July 2014:  Dow Jones 30  -70.48 @ 16,912.11  S&P 500  -8.96 @ 1,969.95  FTSE 100  +19.68 @ 6,807.75  DAX 30  +55.46  @ 9653.63   CAC 40 +20.81 @ 4365.58

10:05am  ~  Not much happening on the few charts I have open on my screen so I may as well go out for a quick cycle ride along the river towards Paper Mill Lock.

11:45pm  ~  I’ve been back for a short while and I can see a possible ‘long’ trade setting up on my S&P500 chart using one of the trendFX patterns.

12:20pm  ~  I am in a ‘long’ position on the S&P chart – the stop loss is 23 pips.

14:45pm  ~  The markets are getting more volatile as the U.S. trading session is getting going so I came out a short while ago – I am off out for a late lunch with friends as well so it’s worked out ok.  My score for the trade was +45 pips.

18:10pm  ~  Back home now after a shopping trip – and I’ll switch on my S&P500 chart soon to see if there’s any “Trade With A Day Job” opportunities over the next few hours.

18:55pm  ~  There is the FOMC statement coming out in a few minutes so the market will most likely become volatile for a short while, so I’m going to  sit and just watch to see what happens.

19:15pm  ~  The market has shot up temporarily but the price action has slowed down slightly so there maybe an “extra” strategy set-up starting to develop.

19:25pm  ~ I am now in a ‘short’ position with a 29 pip stop loss – higher than normal for this particular strategy — but the trade may work ok judging by the way the price is reacting at the moment.

20:20pm  ~  Price momentum has slowed and I am off out for supper in a minute so I’ve come out of the market with a +49 pip profit.