08:40am   Back home after a short break away and I am planning to be here at home watching charts from time to time this morning/early afternoon so any trades I find will be detailed below in my Trading Diary.

Market Update:

Markets started the trading week mixed with U.S. equities largely flat although last night’s Asian session closed slightly up but there does seem to be a growing sentiment across trading floors of concern regarding various global problems that are dominating news headlines.  U.S./Russian relations over Syria are causing oil prices to rise with WTI Crude closing up last night at $53.51 and Libyan oil field closures should keep prices in a bullish mood for the next few days and we could see a return to the  $55.00 resistance level at sometime this month.

The long but steady rise of U.S. equity markets since the end of last year does appear to be over for the time being as traders lose confidence in the new President being able to change economic conditions as quickly as he imagined plus the aforementioned geopolitical issues that are going on in Syria and North Korea and various European countries.  This growing uncertainty is helping the Gold price as investors move towards safety, the yellow metal is heading back towards the $1260 resistance level today so watch for a possible reaction (that’s a euphemism for “trading opportunity)  It is currently trading at $1256.90

Trading Diary:

09:45am   Nothing to see on my collection of favourite charts so far this morning so I am off for a cycle ride in the sunshine.

13:25pm   Due to some bad luck out on my cycle ride, I’ve only just got back – so I’m going to have a couple of hours chart watching now to see if I can pick up a trade somewhere.

14:40pm    Just got into a ‘short’ position on my S&P-500 chart, it’s a Master-The-Trend Strategy-B pattern and the stop loss is a higher than usual 62 pips as I am on the 1-hour timeframe.

15:55pm    I have just come out of my S&P-500 position, the price has come down very nicely but it’s still quite ‘jumpy’ so I have decided to close the trade rather than watching the screen non-stop which is not the way I like to work – it’s simply not relaxing and too much like hard work.  My score is +122 pips and that’ll be good enough for today’s session.

Back here tomorrow morning.