07:55am   I am out and about this morning on errands with ‘Head Office’ but planning to be back in front of my charts before lunchtime. Any trades I take will be detailed below in my Trading Diary.

Market Update:

Equity markets in the U.S. closed slightly down yesterday after reaching new highs intraday as traders adjust their positions ahead of the autumn earning season and inflation data that is due out later today. The S&P-500 touched the new resistance at 2555.00 during yesterday’s session before closing at 2550.93 (-0.14%) and the Dow Jones 30 was down a similiar amount last night. The overnight Asian trading session closed mostly up however despite the selling in the U.S. earlier as traders digested Chinese Trade Balance figures. Exports for September came in ahead of expectations (+8.1%) while imports rose year on year by 18.7% which surprisingly was behind economist’s estimates.

European markets are opening flat this morning as Brexit negotiations and Spanish issues are weighing on investor’s minds. The UK’s divorce from the rest of Europe has hit another brick wall which looks to be affecting equity markets in London and there is still no clear solution for the independence situation in Catalonia so there are lot of traders who are just sitting on their hands for moment.

Oil markets are looking ,ore optimistic this morning after U.S. inventory numbers showed a slight decline in stocks together with growing Chinese imports of crude. U.S. WTI Crude Oil finished 27 cents down yesterday at $50:71 but is climbing this morning and is currently sitting $51:24 although we could see further declines as traders believe there is fairly strong resistance around the $51:00 level.

Trading Diary:

11:40am  I’ve been back home for half an hour and just got into a ‘short’ trade on my 15-min Gold chart.  It’s a Master-The-Trend Strategy-A pattern and my stop loss is only 10 pips.

13:10pm  Off out for lunch so setting take profit level at +20 pips in case there’s an adverse reaction in 20 minutes when the U.S market opens and the CPI figures cause some volatility.

17:50pm   I have been out all afternoon but have just checked my charts now that I’m home and seen that my earlier Gold trade was closed at its target of +20 pips.

Running total for the month is now +206 pips.