08:35am  Apologies for no Market Update yesterday, we had a minor emergency here early morning so no trading either for me. As it’s Friday I do not expect to be doing much trading either although I shall be compiling a Trend-Line TRADE-ALERT sheet for subscribers in the next hour so if I do see any trades while doing that I will report them below.

Market Update:

The overnight Asian trading session ended mainly positively with the Nikkei 225 index coming in ahead even though the Japanese Yen’s strength will hurt exporter. Last night’s U.S. session closed very slightly up, the main S&P index of leading 500 shares finished up 4.80 points ahead mainly on encouraging news for the oil price. There is hope that a forthcoming OPEC meeting will cement an agreement to contain production levels so boosting the price as high global stocks are now unsustainable. U.S. WTI Crude is getting closed to the important $50 level now, it rose $1.44 during Thursday’s session to close at $48.32 and is already trading higher at $48.66 this morning.

European markets have opened lower on the last day of the trading week with the German DAX-30 trading at 10,506 currently compared with the close yesterday afternoon of 10,600. The London FTSE-100 is down by a similiar amount together with French, Spanish and Italian indices.

Gold is being held back in recent days by a bearish trend line on the daily chart which subscribers of my Trend-Line TRADE-ALERT service will have seen but we could see a price breakout to the upside if equity traders lose confidence towards the end of August – an interesting chart to watch.