08:35am   Planning a nice relaxing day at home catching up on emails and doing some chart watching from time to time so any trades I find (& take) will be detailed below in my Trading Diary.

Market Update:

U.S. markets failed to follow through on the positive session on Tuesday and both the Dow Jones 30 and S&P-500 indices closed marginally down on the day. The S&P-500 was initially bullish at the start of the session but then reversed at its 50-day moving average and closed at 2681.66 down by 13.48 points (-0.50%) after a rise in the 10-year Treasury yield sparked concerns amongst traders once again.

The overnight Asian trading session finished fairly upbeat despite the lacklustre performance in the U.S. as Chinese Import/Export data for January came in ahead of expectations. The only major index to close in the red was the Shanghai Composite which wiped out earlier gains to close down by -1.42%. Gold is continuing its slide downwards as the U.S. Dollar strengthens, it closed $5.50 in the red last night at $1318.70 and is further down this morning at $1310.95, its next price target is the $1300 ‘Big’ number so watch for a reaction there if you are trading the commodity today.

Oil is also falling heavily after yesterday’s report that U.S. output is now above 10 million barrels per day which is somewhat undermining the efforts of OPEC members (and Russia) to curb production to help prop up the price.  Brent Crude fell $1.85 by last night’s close to finish Wednesday’s session at $65.33 and further short selling of futures contracts this  morning has driven the price down slightly more at $65.22 although there does seem to be some minor support around the $65.00 level.

Trading Diary:

10:05am  Nothing to report on my collection of favourite charts so I am off for a run.

11:05am  There is a ‘short’ DAX-30 that’s just about to trigger on my 15-min chart but I am going to leave it as the stop loss is 52 pips, too large for that timeframe.

13:10pm    Another opportunity has come up on the German DAX-30 15-min chart and this time I’ve taken as the stop loss is a more reasonable. It’s a Master-The-Trend Strategy-A set-up with a 22 pip stop loss.

13:25pm   Well that was a quick trade !  Just been stopped out at -22 pips.

14:25pm   Just taken another trade on my 15min DAX-30 chart, a UTB price reversal pattern with a 25 pip stop loss.

16:15pm    I am now out of my 2nd DAX trade of the day, the price has come down very well and my score has ended up at +192 pips. I am finished for the day now, screens off with a total for the day of +170 pips.