07:40am   Planning to be here in the study this morning catching up emails & Skype calls plus some chart watching as well – any trades I end up taking will be detailed below.

Market Update:

Tuesday’s European trading session ended mainly down after Crude Oil prices fell fairly dramatically and Bank Of England Governor Mark Carney hinted that there will be no increase in UK interest rates for the foreseeable future. U.S. WTI Crude fell almost 3% during the day on concerns over the continuing global glut and today’s Crude Oil Inventories numbers will be closely watched by traders for further confirmation of this negative outlook.  The U.S. benchmark touched the important $43.00 level yesterday and oil traders are now eyeing up a move towards $40 in the next week or so.

Both major U.S. indices closed down as well last night as energy stocks suffered from oil officially entering a bear market and investors booked some profits after Monday’s record move up. Several U.S. traders I have spoken to in the past 24hrs believe yesterday’s small fall in equity values is merely a small dip and there is still underlying strength in the market so watch for the S&P-500 rising up towards the 2450 level once again before the end of the week.

Gold unsurprisingly did not rise significantly yesterday even though equity markets fell, the selling pressure as mentioned above was mainly profit-taking but it did find support at its 200-day moving average and it has risen from that level this morning. Price hit a low of $1241.20 yesterday but has now advanced fairly well and is sitting at $1245.40 and is looking bullish this morning and we could see price touching the 20MA on the 4hr chart.

Trading Diary:

10:55am   Just entered a ‘long’ position on my German DAX-30 15-min chart, it’s a UTB price-reversal set-up with a 13 pip stop loss.  Off for a cycle ride in the sunshine now, I shall leave the target open and see where the price is when I get back.

12:20pm    The DAX price has hit the 12750 level a couple of times now which could indicate a small resistance level so I have just closed off the position at +16 pips.

12:50pm    I have just taken a ‘long’ position on my WTI Crude chart, it’ll be quite a quick trade I believe as we have the U.S. Crude Oil Inventories announcement in a few hours which will adversely effect the currently calm price-action. It’s a Master-The-Trend Strategy-B set-up with a 19 pip stop loss.

16:05pm    I had to go out on a bit of an emergency a couple of hours ago so I set my trade target at +20 pips and let it run even though the Inventories number was due – the position at the time was barely in profit but I’ve just got back home to see the trade did eventually manage its target so my total for the day +36 pips.