07:55am  I am planning to be at home for most of today and watching my favourite charts from time to time so any trades I find will be reported below through the day.

Market Update:

Markets today will be treading water as they wait for the Federal Reserve’s press conference this evening (UK time) where they will announce their interest rate decision. Expectations are for a small rise of 0.25% and that is priced into the market already so any deviation from that figure will produce a sharp move in equity and currency markets.  The U.S. trading session ended positively with both the Dow Jones and S&P indices closing at record highs as technology stocks recovered recent losses and there is a certain amount of optimism for the expected rate rise as the FOMC will only vote for an increase if they see their economy is improving.

The overnight Asian trading session closed with most indices down although the Australian ASX-200 did post a slight 1.04% rise. There was no real enthusiasm for buying after Chinese industrial production and retail sales numbers came in broadly as expected and Crude Oil values dropped slightly on higher U.S. stocks.  The American Petroleum Institute has estimated that U.S. stocks have risen this week which putt pressure on prices and WTI Crude fell almost 1% yesterday to $46:04 and has been trading sideways ever since, the U.S. benchmark is now at $46:01 and fairly overbought on the daily chart so we could see further falls.

Gold had a busy session yesterday but ended flat at $1266:20 and is slightly up this morning with a suggestion of further moves up, the price has reversed close to its 50-day moving average and is also oversold – watch for small bullish move today.

Trading Diary:

09:25am   I have just entered a ‘long’ position on my S&P-500 15-min chart, it’s a Master-The-Trend strategy-B set-up with a 19 pip stop loss.

10:30am    Nothing else to report on my collection of favourite charts so I am off for a cycle ride in the glorious sunshine.  I have kept my stop loss on the S&P trade at 19 pips and left the target open as I will be back within the hour.

12:05pm    Just returned and seen my trade is still trundling along, current score is +14 pips.  I would think the markets will be quite volatile within the next few hours so unusually I will keep an eye on the chart every 10 minutes or so.

12:50pm    The S&P price has started to become quite ‘jumpy’ and is retreating downwards so I have come out of my position to protect my profit  -  score +20 pips.

13:15pm    The weather is too good to be indoors this afternoon so I am closing off my charts and I will be back here tomorrow morning.