07:30am    Another day at home catching up on the hundreds of emails I’ve had over the past few days about the new ‘Long-Term-Trading’ manual – I will also be doing some chart watching from time to time.

Here in Europe the main focus is two fold although the Greek situation is trumping the UK General Election at the moment. News out yesterday showed that both the British and German government had already made plans for a Greek exit from the the EU and more commentators are coming forward to say that it’s not going to be as big a problem than was first thought. The bigger problem is letting the new anti-austerity Syriza party negotiate their way out of the countries debt repayment commitments as this will signal a green light to other European anti-austerity parties to have a shot at government.

The markets had a generally bearish day yesterday with the U.S. reporting a disappointing monthly trade deficit, the worst for over 6 years and European indices still being dragged down by Greece. Overnight there was slightly better news though in the form of April’s Chinese Services PMI data which although not great did surpass March’s figure and this together with some bargain hunting by traders should give a boost to European markets first thing this morning.

Crude oil markets continue their march upwards with a positive trading session on Tuesday and both WTI Crude and UK Brent Crude are now well above any recent resistance areas – the lows of January and March now seem a distant memory as WTI looks towards the $65 level. Gold on the other hand is still in a generally bearish trend although it’s still stuck in its narrow trading corridor, the behaviour of the major indices over the next few weeks is going to direct the overall sentiment.

Market Close Tuesday 5th May 2015:   Dow Jones 30  -142.20 @ 17,928.20  S&P  500  -25.03 @ 2,089.46  NASDAQ  -73.22 @ 4,409.39  FTSE 100  -58.37 @ 6,927.58  UK AIM  -1.34 @ 751.68  DAX 30  -292.17 @ 11,327.68  CAC 40  -107.90 @ 4,974.07  IBEX   -313.50 @ 11,115.60   Nikkei 225 (Today)  +11.62 @ 19,531.63  Hang Seng (currently)  +74.88 @ 27,830.42

09:30am   Not much happening on my charts at the moment so out for a cycle ride now.

14:35pm    It’s been a quiet day for trading, no set-ups yet on my charts so I am going to get out into the fresh air for the rest of the day and help the builders out the back.