10:10am    Slightly later than usual as I’ve been out on a 25 cycle ride already this morning but I am planing another day in my home office catching up on emails and watching my charts from time to time, any trades I take will be detailed below in my Trading Diary.

Market Update:

European equity markets closed mainly lower on the first trading session of the week as traders focused on earnings and the outcome of the Trump/Putin meeting in Helsinki.  Over in the U.S. the S&P-500 started the week with a negative outlook and failed to much headway all day despite some financial stocks powering ahead and it closed in the red by 2.88 points by last night although the narrower Dow Jones 30 index did manage to finish just ahead at 0.18%.  The banking sector as a whole was much more upbeat and ended 1.8% up mostly driven by good reported earning from Bank Of America and this optimism helped raise a few other companies in the sector.

The overnight Asian trading session ended mainly in the red with only the Japanese Nikkei-225 index closing in positive territory.  Energy shares were the main bearish driver of the night after the oil price declined 4% after the close of the U.S. markets and Chinese markets failed to make much headway after disappointing numbers on Monday. The drop in the oil price was originally started after previous supply problems in Libya were seen to be dissipating but in the past few hours the price is climbing over concerns that supply will be restricted from Norway as oil workers go on strike after unions try to secure better pay and pension provisions for the country’s workers.  Brent Crude closed last night at $71.93, down by $3.06 and the initial bullish move off the $71.50 support has failed to gain momentum and in the last few minutes the price is dropping once more – currently $71.82.

Trading Diary:

10:15am   Been out this morning on a bike ride so no trades to report for the first half of the morning.

12:40pm     No positions to report as yet, out for lunch now.

13:55pm     In a ‘short’position on my GOLD 15-min chart.  It’s a Master-The-Trend Strategy-B pattern with a 27 pip stop loss.

14:50pm    Just taken a quick +73 pip profit from the GOLD position.  Happy with my score for the day so switching off all my screens now but will be back in the morning.