08:05am   Another day planned here in my home office catching up on emails and also doing some chart watching from time to time, any trades I find will be reported below in my Trading Diary.

Market Update:

Markets are still being affected by the U.S. North Korean stand-off and this sentiment put the Dow Jones 30 index under pressure yesterday, it closed down 36 points although the wider S&P-500 was less affected and it ended virtually flat at the end of Wednesday’s session. Understandably there was a move towards safe haven investments so the Swiss Franc rose through the day and Gold advanced over $16.00 to end the session at $1277.10 and has actually touched the $1280 level earlier this morning before some profit-taking.

The overnight Asian trading session continued to be affected by North Korean rhetoric early on although experts are doubting whether Kim Jong-un will actually follow through on his brave words so there has been some recovery in stock prices in the last few hours of trading before the close. This morning’s European trading session has began in negative territory although the FTSE-100′s early losses are mainly due to the amount of stocks going ex-dividend today.

Crude oil is starting to look more bullish and this sentiment is mainly due to the announcement yesterday that there was a surprising fall in U.S. stocks, there was a weekly drop of 6.5 million barrels against an expectation of 2.7 million and this has occurred despite higher output by U.S. companies. WTI Crude rose 70 cents yesterday to close the day at $49.68 and is trading at that level this morning although oil traders I have spoken to in the last 12 hours are finding it hard to believe the price is going to go above the $50 in the near future.

Trading Diary:

09:15am   I have just entered a ‘short’ position on my U.S. S&P-500 1hr chart, it’s a Master-The-Trend Strategy-B pattern and my stop loss is 33 pips which is about average for this timeframe.

09:35am    Nothing much to see on any of my other ‘favourite’ charts so I am off for a cycle ride for the next hour or so.

12:10pm    The S&P-500 has come down (eventually) quite well and I have now just closed off my position at +42 pips.

13:15pm    Now in another ‘short’ trade, it’s another Master-The-Trend set-up but a Strategy-A pattern this time. It’s on my FTSE-100 chart and the stop loss is a more reasonable 11 pips, not sure how long I’ll be in the position as the U.S. trading session open is imminent and we could experience some volatility.

14:50pm    The FTSE price is becoming quite volatile (as expected) so I am now out of my position with a quick 25 pip profit.  I happy with my +67 pip profit for the day so I am switching off my screens for the day – back here tomorrow for the last trading day of the week.