07:45am  ~ I am starting the week off with a tennis match at 9am but will be back around lunch time to do some emails, Skype calls and occasional chart watching.

The market’s main direction for the first few hours today are no doubt going to be influenced by Chinese industrial production and retail sales numbers that were released on Saturday morning after all markets were closed for the weekend. They show a marked slowdown for the world’s 2nd largest economy and this will obviously have a knock-on effect with other trading partners in the coming months, so companies that are directly involved in the Chinese market will feel the pinch.  Over in the U.S. their retail sales and consumer confidence rose last week so the ‘good news is bad news’ comes into play again without worries that the Fed are going to raise interest rates sooner than expected and with the Central Bank meeting later this week, there will no doubt be some sort of guidance from Chairman Janet Yellen regarding timing of this market-moving occurrence.

Slowdowns in European and Chinese economies plus the end of the U.S. driving season has put pressure on Crude Oil prices again, the U.S. WTI Crude is sharply down in early morning trading at the moment, currently sitting around a previous support level of $91 and Brent Crude is now sitting at $96.37 a level that’s not been seen for over 2 years, so there will be bargain hunters watching their charts this week, watch out for some small support levels appearing giving a good excuse to get in ‘long’ for a quick trade.  Gold prices stages another sharp drop on Friday (down $9.60 to $1230.20) continuing its bearish trend that began at the middle of last month – all in all it has lost around $120 in that time and is now well below the established $1240 support level. It would seem that the next support is around $1210 so watch for ‘short’ opportunities after small retraces.

Market Close Friday 12th Sept. 2014:  Dow Jones 30  -19.71 @ 17,049.00  S&P 500  +1.76 @ 1,997.45  NASDAQ  -2.32 @4,092.65  FTSE 100  -30.49 @ 6,799.62  DAX 30  -8.89 @ 9,691.28  CAC 40  -9.89 @ 4,440.90

08:05am  ~  Just glancing at a couple of charts while answering a trading-related email and although there’s nothing much happening on my usual favourites as is normal for the start of the week, there does seem to be something developing with the French CAC40 index.

08:45am  ~  The possible trade still looks on and if the price rises above 4425 I will get into a ‘long’ position. The set-up is from my ‘Magic-Line’ free trading system

09:00am  ~  I am now in that ‘long’ position with a whopping 7 pip stop loss !

09:05am  ~  I am off out in a minute so I’ve set-up my stop loss plus a take profit at 15 pips. Not a large target but these European indices do not have great daily movements in relation to certain other charts – see the chapter on this specific subject in my ‘Master-The-Reversal’ manual.

11:55am  ~  Just turned on my charts after getting back here and I can see a possible ‘long’ trade on my S&P 500 chart.  My earlier CAC40 trade came out at +15 pips.

12:15pm  ~  In a ‘long’ position on the S&P 500 using strategy 3 from the trendFX collection of set-ups. Stop loss is 31 pips.

14:30pm  ~   Just hit the 1:1 target before the U.S. markets opened – safely out of the position.  There can sometimes be quite a large movement on the Dow Jones and S&P after a weekend break.

18:50pm  ~  I did switch on my S&P 500 chart at 5 o’clock to see if there were any “Trade With A Day Job” set-ups developing but so far nothing so that’s it for the day as we’re out in ten minutes.

Daily Target  +20 pips

Pips Achieved  +46 pips.