08:50am   I’ve not been in front of my screens very much this week for various reasons so I thought I’d have a quiet day here in the office catching up on emails and Skype calls so I will have my charts up in front of me as well – any trades I take will be detailed below in my Trading Diary.

Market Update:

Global stock markets are reacting to President Trump’s latest action on trade tariffs, the U.S. Dow Jones 30 index fell 724 points by the close last night at 23,957.89 – its biggest one day fall for nearly 2 months and the futures this morning are further down at 23,839.56.  There is a concern over just how far the trade war between the U.S. and China is going to go but rising interest rates have also spooked investors as well this week. The broader S&P-500 index was also down on Thursday, it fell 68.24 to 2,643.69 slightly less in percentage terms than the Dow.

The Asian markets overnight carried on the negative sentiment, the Japanese Nikkei-225 index fell nearly 1,000 points and indices in China were down by around 3%. President Trump signed a memorandum that imposes tariffs on around $60 billion of imports from China so in answer to this, China has now listed 128 products from the U.S. that they will target with similiar tariffs in retaliation.  As is usual, the safe-haven Japanese Yen has risen on these concerns as has Gold which has risen $12.10 since the Asian trading session opened late last night European time, currently at $1341.10.

Oil prices are buoyant this morning after a statement from Saudi Arabia that the current production limits from OPEC and Russia need to be maintained well into 2019. WTI Crude experienced a negative day yesterday but is up 45 cents this morning at $64.65.

Trading Diary:

09:55am   Just taken a ‘short’ position on my WTI Crude 15-min chart, it’s a Master-The-Trend Strategy-B pattern with a 23 pip stop loss.

12:15pm    Well this is unusual.   I am still in the WTI ‘short’ position but I’ve had a signal for a ‘long on my Brent Crude 30-min chart so I’ve taken that as well, only one is going to come out ahead here !  The ‘long’ position is a Master-The-Reversal UTB pattern and my stop loss is 22 pips.

12:40pm  As expected, one position has been stopped out. It was the WTI trade at -23 pips.

15:05pm  Unusually I have been watching the Brent chart fairly closely and the price has become very volatile so I’ve closed the position off before it starts to tumble. I have managed a score of +98 pips, giving me a total of +75 pips for the day.

My score for the week has come in at +124 pips and so far this month I have amassed +401 pips.  Back in front of my charts next Tuesday.