08:35am   Quiet day planned at home catching up on emails and doing some chart watching from time to time  –  any trades I find will be detailed below.

Market Update:

Global news is being dominated by the launch of a missile by North Korea which was aimed at waters north of Japan in a move which is seen as further provocation towards the U.S. and its allies. The overnight Asian trading session has seen equity markets slump as a result with major Chinese and Japanese indices posting negative closing figures although the Japanese Nikkei 225 did not fare as badly as was expected and this morning’s European session has got off to a negative start as well.

Yesterday’s U.S. trading session was affected by the fall-out from tropical storm Harvey which is sweeping much of Texas, with large U.S. insurer Travelers contributing a large percentage of the losses in the S&P-500 due to expected pay-outs resulting from the storm damage. Another casualty from the freak weather is the Texas oil industry as production is disrupted and oil refining capacity has lost millions of barrels this week and this is causing some volatility in crude markets as there is expected to be a glut of crude waiting to be refined. U.S. WTI Crude fell as a result by $1.09 yesterday to close at $46:79 and is further down this morning at $46:66.

As equity markets slide on North Korean concerns Gold is understandably experiencing a surge in price, it rose $16:85 yesterday to close at $1309:80 and is further up this morning at $1324:85 and looks to be heading for the next minor resistance around the $1342:00 level.  The rush for safe-haven products is also favouring the Japanese Yen which is up against all currencies this morning.

Trading Diary:

08:50am   Nothing much happening on my collection of favourite charts* at the moment so I am off for a cycle ride in the sunshine.  (* S&P-500, FTSE-100, DAX-30, Gold, WTI Crude & Brent Crude)

11:10am    I am now in a ‘short’ position on my WTI Crude Oil chart, it’s a Master-The-Trend Strategy-B set-up with a 20 pip stop loss

13:55pm  Back from lunch and seen my WTI trade has been stopped out at -20 pips.

14:45pm   Now in another Master-The-Trend Strategy-B position, this time it on my S&P-500 15-min chart and the high stop loss of 64 pips reflects the current volatility in some markets today.

16:10pm   My S&P position has come in to profit by a small margin and due to the previously mentioned volatility I have decided to close the trade off in case of any wild swings in the next hour or so.  The trade has managed a +90 pip profit, giving me an overall score for the day of +70 pips and a total for the month of +436 pips.  Back here tomorrow morning for some more chart watching