08:25am    Quiet day at home for me, braced for the adverse weather we will be having this morning so I will be chart watching on and off until around 3pm when we are off for a 3-day break. Back trading on Tuesday morning.

Market Update:

Yesterday’s U.S. trading session was fairly volatile but there does seem to be some hints that the overblown ‘Trump Rally’ maybe slowing slightly after the President-Elect’s first official news conference yielded no concrete policy decisions but plenty of banter with the press. Traders were hoping for some sort of forward guidance but as there was nothing forthcoming we may see markets drift sideways or fall slightly for the rest of January and last night U.S. equity indices all closed lower with the tech-heavy Nasdaq ending down for the first time this year.

This sentiment was carried over to the overnight Asian session where Chinese full-year export data showed a decline of 6.1% but imports rose by just over 3% but in contrast the European markets this morning are showing small signs of buying in London, Paris and Frankfurt.  The oil market is recovery from falls at the beginning of the month and there does seem to be strong support at the $50 level for WTI Crude and this is strengthened by news that Saudi Arabia is cutting production to a greater extent than was first promised together with news of record Chinese imports in December . U.S. WTI Crude had another positive session yesterday and closed up 66 cents at $53:00 and is around that same level at the moment.

Trading Diary:

09:45am    Nothing very exciting to see on my collection of favourite charts so I am off for a bracing cycle ride.

10:40am   Just got back and seen that  ’long’ trade triggered a short while ago on the S&P-500 1-hour chart but I have just managed to get a fill at a good level as the price has retraced slightly.  It’s a Master-The-Trend Strategy-B set-up and my stop loss is 23 pips.

11:50am   I am now also in a ‘long’ position on the FTSE-100 30-min chart, it is another Master-The-Trend set-up, this time a Strategy-A pattern. My stop loss is just 9 pips.

13:35pm    Just noticed that my S&P-500 trade has been stopped out during the opening few minutes of the U.S. trading session at -23 pips.  I have adjusted the stop loss on the FTSE position to break even so that we do not have two losing trades this afternoon.

15:20pm    The price on the FTSE-100 has just shot up fairly quickly and then started to retreat back so I have closed my position off at +18 pips leaving me with a small loss on the day – I am closing my charts soon and finishing my week’s trading.