08:10am   Another quiet day at home planned catching up on emails and Skype calls and also doing some chart watching from time to time ~ any trades I take will be detailed below through the day.

Market Update:

European markets closed mainly down yesterday amid fears of a snap election in Italy and the prospect of a hung parliament in the UK as the Conservative’s are beginning to lose their previously dominant position ahead of next week’s poll. Banking stocks were the worst performers and British Airway’s parent company IAG also ended negatively after falling over 2.5% on the day after computer issues over the bank holiday weekend.

Following on from the European close, the end of Tuesday’s U.S. trading session finished negatively as well with the Dow Jones 30 down 50 points on worries over a June interest rate hike amongst many issues – Goldman Sachs was the biggest loser on the day. The overnight Asian session closed mixed after the negative U.S. close although Chinese stocks were buoyant as traders returned after their extended bank holiday.

Gold is starting to look stronger as equity markets are struggling to rise much higher, the commodity found a small support area at $1260 yesterday and is looking fairly bullish this morning and could head for $1270 within the next few days.  Oil closed down yesterday with U.S. WTI Crude reversed at $50 and headed downwards and this fall is carrying on this morning, the U.S. benchmark is sitting at $49:15 at the moment and $48:50 looks to be the next target.

Trading Diary:

11:40am   It has been a fairly quiet morning as far as my collection of favourite charts are concerned but I have just returned from a cycle ride to find a ‘long’ opportunity on my German DAX-30 30-min chart.

It is a Master-The-Trend Strategy-B pattern and my stop loss is higher than normal at 36 pips, reflecting the high volatility at the moment.

13:10pm   The U.S. trading session is starting soon and the DAX-30 has touched the significant 12,700 and begun to retreat back so I have come out of my position with a +71 pip profit.

15:55pm     Been back from lunch a short while but nothing interesting on my charts so I am closing them off now  –  happy with the day’s score which gives me a total of +381 pips for this month.