07:50am   I am planning a quiet day at home today and some chart watching from time to time so any trades I take will be detailed below in my Trading Diary.

Market Update:

U.S. markets had a mostly positive day on Monday after a perceived cooling of the trade war against China and at one stage the Dow Jones 30 index was up over 400 points although this was almost completely erased by the close as news emerged that the FBI had raided President Trump’s lawyer’s offices. The index eventually finished up just 46 points at 23,979.10 (+0.19%) and the S&P-500 closed up by +0.33%.

The overnight Asian trading session started flat but ended mainly on a positive note as China’s President Xi Jinping hinted at measures that would open the Chinese economy to outside investment and lower tariffs for various products including cars. The Shanghai Composite and Hang Seng index closed up +1.61% and +1.79% respectively to end the session as the best performers and Australian and South Korean markets also had a good showing.

Oil markets were in an optimistic mood on Monday as trade concerns between the U.S. and China began to dissipate and both the WTI Crude and Brent Crude rose around 2% although there has been some profit-taking this morning as traders eye up the continuing high stock situation across the world. U.S. WTI Crude Oil prices have been stuck between $58.00 and $66.00 for all of 2018 and the price this morning is above the minor support/resistance level at $64.00 so there is scope for further moves up towards the $65.00 level (currently $64.16)

Gold has been virtually trend-less for the past few weeks as traders pull money in and out of the market depending on the latest news, it had mainly positive session on Monday, rising $2.50 to finish at $1336.00 and it is just $1.00 down from that level this morning. It has found some support at its 20-day moving average so we could see a small price rise through the day.

Trading Diary:

 10:45am    Nothing to report so far this morning concerning trade opportunities, off for a run now.

14:20pm    Back home now after lunch out and nothing yet on my collection of favourite charts.

15:00pm  In a ‘long’ position on my UK FTSE-100 15-min. chart more details soon. on a Skype call at the moment.

15:15pm   The trade above is a Master-The-Trend Strategy-A pattern with a 13 pip stop loss.

A technical issue has resulted in today’s post not being completed.  The above trade ended at +24 pips and was my last of the day.