08:25am   Away on a short 3-day break at lunchtime so just a few hours of trading this morning – any trades I have will be reported below.

Market Update:

The overnight Asian trading session was quite subdued as a majority of indices were closed due to national holidays although yesterday’s U.S. session closed fairly upbeat with the main S&P-500 finishing 21.49 points up (+1.01%) although this optimism has not extended to this morning’s European session where most indices have opened down in the past few minutes. The U.S. equity markets have not really recovered from the large falls last week as uncertainty over interest rates still dominate.

In Germany, bank shares have been hit hard this morning as Deutsche Bank has been hit with a $14 billion fine from the U.S Department Of Justice over suggestions of mis-selling of mortgage-backed securities so there are concerns other financial institutions will suffer the same fate.

In the Crude Oil markets, U.S. WTI Crude is still heading down towards the small $43.00 support level as worries over higher production still dominate the charts. Brent Crude is also looking fairly bearish this morning and is heading towards the $45:70 level.

Trading Diary:

11:15am   I sent out a chart earlier to subscribers of my daily Trading-Guidance email showing a possible price break-out on the GBP/USD chart and even though it’s not a chart I usually trade I have just got into a ‘short’ position as the price has indeed broken to the downside. It’s a trendFX strategy-3 set-up and my stop loss is 24 pips.

13:35pm   It’s almost time to get going on my long weekend trip away so I’ve closed off my GBP/USD position at +36 pips.

My total for the past 3-days of trading is +145 pips, happy with that for the week.