07:25am    Off out for the day in a few hours with some trader friends so no chart watching for me today – but back in front of my screens tomorrow.

Market Update:

Yesterday’s U.S. trading session was fairly volatile and switched from positive to negative a few times as the earning reporting season gets underway and it ended slightly down at the close following on from a bearish European session on Wednesday as well. The overnight Asian session did not fair much better with equity markets all showing red earlier this morning with the Chinese Hang Seng and Australian ASX-200 indices leading the way at over 1% down by the close.

Crude oil values are continuing their bearish trend despite the encouraging U.S. stock situation that was reported yesterday, traders are still not convinced that OPEC will deliver on production restrictions as there are a growing number of members who are putting their own countries oil earnings above the common good of other OPEC members. And there is also a growing realisation on trading floors that if OPEC does cut production, non member countries will just up their own output to fill the gap. WTI Crude ended slightly down last night despite a $1.08 rise as soon as the favourable Crude Inventory number was announced, it is currently trading at $49.28, down from October’s high of $52.17 that was reached last week.

Gold’s rise this month from its $1240 minor support is slowing now despite continued buying from India and it seems to have found resistance at the 20-day moving average – there could be some interesting trading opportunities at this level.

Trading Diary:

10:10am   I had not expected to do any trading this morning but as I was compiling my latest Triangle Trading System TRADE-ALERT Sheet I noticed a trendFX strategy-1 pattern on the Gold chart so I am now in a ‘long’ position with a 9 pip stop loss.  As I am off out very soon for the rest of the day I shall set a target of +20 pips and leave it to run.