07:55am   I am planning to some chart watching here at home this morning and early afternoon ahead of a 5-day trip away so any trades I have will be detailed below.  After today, I will be back in front of my screens next Wednesday (19th April)

Market Update:

Widespread pessimism is spreading across markets as President Trump maintains that the U.S. Dollar is currently too strong and hints at measures to reduce its value and there are also doubts regarding his foreign policy going forward. As well as these uncertainties, the U.S. company reporting season is upon us and banks are up first with JP Morgan, Wells Fargo and Citigroup due to release latest earnings later this afternoon and talk on Wall Street is for lower than expected numbers.

The overnight Asian market closed mostly negative with the Japanese Yen rising as investors and traders rush to safe haven products in the wake of perceived global instability. The Shanghai Composite came out ahead, rising 0.07% to close at 3277.04 and also the South Korean Kospi closed up 19.70 points as the Bank Of Korea announced they were keeping rates on hold once again.

Crude oil markets had another volatile session as news emerged that U.S. stockpiles fell slightly more than expected although this encouraging situation could not keep prices up and WTI Crude ended Wednesday’s session at $52.78, down 67 cents from a daily high of $53.73.  As expected, Gold is still riding high on a wave of safe haven buying, it hit another 2017 high at $1286.60 yesterday and is not far short of that level this morning as the European trading session gets underway.

Trading Diary:

10:25am   I have just entered a ‘short’ position on my 15-min S&P-500 chart, it’s a Master-The-Trend Strategy-B with a 28 pip stop loss.

13:40pm    Just got back from lunch and seen that my S&P position is still trundling along and sitting currently at -8 pips.  It has got close to its first target of +28 pips earlier but missed it by one pip.

14:40pm   My S&P-500 trade has just been stopped out at -28 pips and almost immediately a ‘short’ Gold position has just triggered, it’s a UTB price-reversal pattern with a 17 pip stop loss.  This will not be a very long trade as we are leaving for the airport in an hour so if it does not move down fairly quickly I’ll have to set a target.

15:05pm   I have decided to come out of my Gold position as the price has come down quite well in the last 20 minutes and I have plenty of other things to be getting on with now. My score is +43 pips giving me an overall profit for the day of +15 pips and a weekly total of +157 pips. I’ll be back here next Wednesday but in the meantime I hope you have a nice relaxing few days away from the screens.