08:10am   I am back home now after a short break away for a family wedding – and I will be doing some chart watching today amongst other errands and visits. Any trades I take will be detailed below in my Trading Diary.

Market Update:

Markets are treading water to a certain extent this morning as traders await the U.S. Federal Reserve’s interest rate decision which is due out later today. There is a 95% expectations for a rise of 0.25% and the U.S. trading session on Tuesday closed ahead last night on this expectation.  The Dow Jones 30 index finished at 24,727.27 (+116.36) and the wider S&P-500 index closed slightly less at +4.02 points at 2,716.94 and although a rate hike is almost certain, market watchers are keen to see what the Fed is going to hint at with regard to rises for the rest of the year – three more seems to be on the cards but we will have to wait for the FOMC press conference at 18:30pm tonight (UK time)

The overnight Asian trading session ended mixed as traders await the aforementioned Fed rate decision, Chinese indices closed in negative territory, Japan was on holiday and the Australian ASX-200 ended slightly up at 6053.10 (+0.20%).  Europe is busy opening at the moment and first impressions is low volumes and caution across trading floors in London, Frankfurt and Paris and the Pan-European Stoxx-600 is trading flat at the moment.

Oil prices have been given a boost as Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman arrived in Washington amid rumours that a fresh set of sanctions are going to be announced for Iran and if it occurs there would be upto half a million barrels per day missing from the market as the year progresses.  U.S. WTI Crude rose $1.56 by last night to close at $63.68 and approaching a small resistance area at $64.00.

Gold prices are up this morning as the U.S. Dollar falls slightly although it had a negative session on Tuesday, it fell $5.90 to $1311.00 but is at $1317.40 at the moment and looks to be rising towards the 50-day moving average ($1320)

Trading Diary:

09:45am   Just taken a ‘short’ position on my UK FTSE-100 15-min chart, it’s a Master-The-Trend Strategy-B pattern and my stop loss is 15 pips.

10:10am    I need to pop out for an hour or two so I have set my target at +20 pips for the FTSE position.

12:45pm   Back now and the FTSE trade is still current and I’ve also taken a ‘long’ position on my GOLD 1hr chart, more details soon just got a Skype call to do now.

13:10pm     The GOLD trade is a Master-The-Trend Strategy-A pattern and my stop loss is 33 pips, reasonable for the timeframe.

13:50pm    I have just taken a quick profit from my GOLD position (+64 pips) but my FTSE trade is trundling around break even, it has been going sideways for a few hours now.

16:15pm  It’s taken a while but my FTSE-100 trade has eventually been stopped out ! This means my overall score for today stands at +49 pips. Screens off and back early tomorrow morning.