08:30am CET (07:30 UK time)  ~  Back into trading mode this morning, I shall be here at home for most of the day catching up on emails and also doing some charts watching from time to time – although I will be off for a cycle ride at some stage.

Although the People’s Bank of China has lowered their base lending rate overnight, the second time in the last 3 months, it is going to be seen as more as a reflection of a poor economic outlook rather than a reason for traders to get their buying boots on this week, so there may not be the expected dramatic rise in equity values that some commentators are predicting. Looking at my charts for last week while I was away from my screens I can see that U.S. markets hit record levels (again) midweek but then struggled to keep the momentum up and drifted mainly lower by Friday on the back of disappointing GDP and home sales figures and over in the UK, the London FTSE 100 index also reached a new high on Friday that was just short of the 7000 level at 6969 but the story was similiar with not enough bullish momentum to stay at these heights. There is plenty of economic news out this coming week to aid volatility and traders and investors will be keen to see if these new record levels are broken as this may give rise to further advances into uncharted waters.

Over on the Crude Oil market, UK Brent has been steadily rising in value but has found a resistance level at $63 over the past few weeks although the next few days will see traders testing this to see if it will hold – if broken, the next level to aim for would be $67.50. U.S. WTI Crude is at a much lower value, currently sitting at $49.13 as I write this and has been trapped in a narrow band between $47 and $54 over the past month.

Market Close Friday 27th February 2015:   Dow Jones 30  -81.72 @ 18,132.70  S&P 500  -6.24 @ 2,104.50  NASDAQ  -21.60 @ 4,440.67  FTSE 100  -3.07 @ 6,946.66  UK AIM  +1.67 @ 714.50  DAX 30  +74.47 @ 11,401.66  CAC 40  +40.86 @ 4,951.48  IBEX  +38.80 @ 11,178.30   Nikkei 225 (Today)  +28.94 @ 18,826.88  Hang Seng (currently)  +37.47 @ 24,860.76

All time below are CET (UK time +1 hr)

14:15pm  ~  I had missed the intermittent Spanish broadband but this morning has reminded me – it has been patchy all morning but I did manage to get into a ‘short’ position earlier on my Brent Crude chart – a trendFX set-up – and so far it’s doing ok and I am still in the position.  Email is problematic but I keep trying it every hour.

15:25pm  ~  Out of the trade now as I am facing pressure from Head Office to go into town and grab a late lunch.  The position ended up at +82 pips with a 31 pip stop loss originally.

18:00pm  ~  Been back a short while but no more trading for today as we are out soon for the evening