08:05am  I am back home after a long weekend break and I shall be 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 detailed below.

Market Update:

European equity markets closed mainly higher on Monday as perceived geopolitical risk subsided and Portugal returned to ‘Investment Grade’ once again after 5 years and this sentiment was carried on later in the day over in the U.S. where the Dow Jones 30 index closed once again at a record high. The index of 30 leading companies finished the session up 63 points at 22,331.35 with Boeing and Caterpillar contributing the highest rises together with the financial sector as a whole although this could be tempered today as traders await the outcome of the two day Federal Reserve meeting which kicks off today.

The overnight Asian trading session ended mixed as traders seemed reluctant to buy ahead of the Fed meeting as they are concerned about future U.S. monetary policy although the Japanese Nikkei-225 index gained over 1.77% by the close as a raft of buying occurred following their Respect For The Aged bank holiday.  Gold is still edging down as equity markets rise although the fall has lessened slightly as the price hit the 200-moving average on the 4-hr chart but we could see a further drop this week to the minor support/resistance level at $1296.  The commodity is currently sitting at $1307.10 having fallen $11.55 during yesterday’s session.

Crude oil values are still on the rise as OPEC leading member Saudi Arabia together with other major producers such as Russia have pledged to hold back around 1.8 million barrels per day from the market for the rest of 2017 to try to prop up prices and this does seem to be having an effect although as expected, the U.S. producers have taken advantage of this and increased shale production to compensate so the rise in the WTI Crude price could be capped around the $50/$51 level.  It’s price is currently at $50.56 up from last night’s close of $49.91.

Trading Diary:

08:20am    Just entered a ‘short’ position on my German DAX-30 15-min chart more details shortly as I have a Skype call now.

08:25am    The above trade was triggered by a Master-The-Trend Strategy B pattern and my stop loss is 13 pips.

08:45am    As it’s early in the morning and the European trading session is still getting underway I have exercised some caution and taken a quick 20 pip profit from my DAX trade.

09:00am   Nothing much else happening on my charts at the moment so I am off for a cycle ride for an hour or so.

15:30pm    Back from a late lunch and there’s not very much happening on my collection of favourite charts so I am switching them off for the day – back here tomorrow morning.