09:20am   Late start and a nice relaxing day at home and I will be watching my charts from time to time as well. Any trades I have will be reported below.

Away for a long weekend break early tomorrow so back here Tuesday morning

Market Update:

Markets are mostly looking quite bullish on the back of Wednesday’s encouraging Chinese trade balance together with some positive corporate results in the U.S. as amongst other, the country’s largest bank, JP Morgan came in with better than expected 1st quarter profits on the back of better trading revenue and falling costs.  The S&P-500 ended yesterday’s trading session at a significant support/resistance line of 2082 (+1%) and the Dow Jones was also up a similiar percentage to finish the day at 17,908.

Asian stocks also had a positive overnight session with the main Chinese Shanghai Composite coming in 0.52% higher and the Hang Seng fairing slightly better (+0.85%).  Crude oil prices have been rising well since the beginning of last week but U.S. WTI Crude has now hit a resistance line around $42.00 and reversed back slightly and is currently down at $41:54, this resistance also coincides with its 200-day moving average so could be quite significant for traders.

Gold is still suffering from higher equity markets, it fell $12:80 yesterday to end the day at $1243:40 and is don a few more dollars this morning after the overnight Asian session.

Trading Diary:

09:55am   Just waiting to see if the German Dax-30 price drops below 10,041 in the next 15 minutes or so – if that does occur it will trigger a ‘short’ UTB trade.

10:10am   I am now in the above mentioned position, my stop loss is 28 pips.

11:40am   Now in a ‘long’ Brent Crude trendFX trade (strategy-3) with a 25 pip stop loss.

12:05pm   My Dax trade has not really produced many pips yet, the price has been going sideways for most of the morning and as I’m off for a cycle ride now I’ve brought the stop loss upto -10 pips to lessen any losses but also give the trade a bit of room to move – profit set at +28 pips. Leaving the Brent Crude trade profit level open at the moment and stop loss where it is as the position has not been running for long. Back at 2pm to see how they’ve fared.

13:55pm   Just back from cycle ride and my Dax trade has been stopped out at -10 pips and I’ve closed off the Brent trade at $44:49 giving me +29 pips. The price had been higher but seemed to be reversing at the $44:60 level so I took a short profit that allows me to be out in the garden this afternoon.