08:40am   Plans today are based mainly around the house so any trades I find through the day will be detailed below in my Trading Diary.

Market Update:

U.S. equity markets did close marginally higher last night despite a fairly volatile session that saw the Dow Jones Index fall by 166 points at one point but rallied towards the end of the session to finish 9.36 points higher at 24,884.12 but futures trading overnight has witnessed some large bullish pressure on the news that Trump’s Chief Economic Adviser Gary Cohen has resigned over arguments and disagreements concerning the proposed trade tariffs.

This unsettling news has affected the overnight Asian trading session and virtually all the regions equity markets have closed in the red with the Australian ASX-200 index coming out as the night’s worst performer, losing almost 1% during the session. There was good news however as it emerged that North Korea was willing to engage in talks with the U.S. about denuclearisation  so stocks that traded with the rogue nation jumped on the announcement.

European markets have started Wednesday’s session down although there is some limited buying which is bringing indices back upto yesterday afternoon’s close, all eyes will be on the U.S. open for some direction later.

Oil prices are under pressure after Cohen’s resignation as he is seen as an advocate of free trade and the rising U.S. stock situation and also Crude production is weighing heavily on the commodity. WTI Crude fell 19 cents during yesterday’s volatile session to close at $62.85 and is further down this morning at $61.82 with its 200-day moving average as the next target.

Trading Diary:

10:45am     Nothing to report from my collection of favourite charts so off for a cycle ride.

12:10pm   Still no trades to disclose so I am going out for an early lunch.

14:15pm     I have just taken a ‘long’ position on my UK FTSE-100 15-min chart, it’s a Master-The-Trend Strategy-B pattern with a 12 pip stop loss.

14:35pm   Just been invited out for a game of golf so leaving stop loss at 12 pips and setting target at 20 pips.

16:50pm    I was not going to take any further trades today but just glanced at my charts to see what had occurred to my FTSE trade while I was out and I noticed a very fine example of a UTB price reversal pattern setting up on the U.S. S&P-500 15-min chart so I am in that with an extremely ‘generous’ 42 pip stop loss, slightly larger than usual for this timeframe.  Previous FTSE trade ?  Stopped out at -12 pips !

17:20pm    The S&P price has come down quite dramatically but it has just started to rise equally as fast so I am now out of the position with a +106 pips profit, giving me an overall score for the day of +94 pips.