06:55am    Just in the middle of writing my daily ‘Trading-Guidance’ email which is going out soon and for the rest of the morning I shall be here in the study replying to emails and watching some charts. Any trades I have will be reported here.

Market Update:

European markets had a generally bearish session yesterday as the Euro value rose which always hurts the large exporters and Germany’s GDP numbers came in less than expected. Traders also had the Greek situation in the back of their minds as that crisis trundles on in the background with many commentators and EU officials believing that an exit is coming anyway, it’s just the timeframe that has to be negotiated.  In the U.S. there was also disappointing economic news, this time in the form of retail sales which came in at zero against a prediction of +0.3% and well below last month’s rise of 1.1% and this together with lower than expected earnings reports from JC Penney and Maceys meant that indices struggled and ultimately ended slightly down the day

Wednesday is U.S. Crude Inventories announcement day and yesterday’s numbers showed a slight drop although the refinery utilization rate fell by nearly 2% which raised expectations that oil stockpiles could rise in the coming weeks so WTI Crude fell by $1:20 to end at just over $60.   With disappointing U.S. economic news yesterday putting a possible rate rise back to the end of the year, investors moved back into safe haven products so Gold staged a small rally and ended up nearly $23 on the day and is now very close to its near-term resistance level at $1220.

Trading Diary:

11:55am   I am off out for a long cycle ride with friends shortly but a UTB trade looks to be setting up on my Brent Crude chart so I’ll take it if it triggers and see if it gets to a small profit before I go out.

12:25pm   The Brent trade did trigger and I got into a ‘short’ position about 20 minutes ago, my stop loss is 15 pips. I am off out now so I’ve set profit at 25 pips.

14:20pm    Got back just after 2pm and I’m already in a ‘long’ position on my Dax 30 chart, it’s a trendFX strategy-3 set-up with a 38 pip stop loss. My earlier Brent trade was stopped out at -15 pips.

15:15pm   Off out shopping with the Blonde so as the trade is at +66 pips so far so I’ve put the stop at +30 pips and I’ll see where it’s at when we get back.

17:55pm    Just got home and as the trade was at +110 pips I’ve closed it off — happy with that and it gives me +95 pips for the day.