08:30am   Planning a morning here in the study catching up on emails and doing some chart watching ahead of a 4-day trip to Brighton. Any trades I have will be detailed below and already I can report a ‘short’ position entered earlier on my Brent Crude Oil chart – more details below.

Market Update:

The U.S. Federal Reserve kept their minimum lending rate on hold yesterday after their monthly 2-day meeting but reiterated their stance that the economy was performing well under the circumstances and this is increasing the speculation for a June hike. Bank stocks rose heavily after the statement although this was enough to help equity markets and the three major indices closed fairly flat although they are performing well in the futures market this morning.

The overnight Asian market closed mainly down after the FOMC meeting showed a fairly hawkish stance on rates plus a surprise fall in copper, nickel and zinc values of around 3% on the day hit indices – especially Australia where metal exports are a large part of their economy.  European markets have got off to a good start this morning with encouraging earnings reports helping equities and a good show from Macron in last night’s French Presidential debate ahead of this weekend’s vote.

Gold suffered another bearish day and has now reached its 200-day moving average so we could see a small reaction, it closed at $1237.90 last night and is down a further $1.05 at the moment but watch for potential bullish trading opportunities around this level.

Trading Diary:

08:35am    The position I mention above is on my Brent Crude 15-min chart and it’s a Master-The-Trend Strategy-B pattern with a 15 pip stop loss.

09:25am    Just come out of the Brent position as price action is suggesting that it has hit a small support area around the $50:25, I have exited at $50:29 giving me a score of +21 pips.

13:10pm    Nothing more to report regarding my trading exploits today, I am switching off my screens now until next Tuesday as I am away for a 4-day break although there will be my usual early morning Trading-Guidance and Trend-Line Alert emails to subscribers over the next few days.