08:30am   Spending the day here at home doing some chart watching so any trades I take will be detailed below in my Trading Diary.

Market Update:

U.S. equity markets were heavily affected by the decline in tech stocks yesterday, the Nasdaq was down by 1.4% to 7,630 after shares in Amazon, Alphabet, Facebook and Netflix fell between 1.8% and 5.7%. This bearish sentiment in the technology sector began last week after Facebook dropped 19% in one session on concerns over faltering revenues and this has affected other large tech companies over the last three sessions.  The S&P-500 ended on Monday evening at 2,802.60, down 16.22 points (-0.58%) and the narrower Dow Jones 30 index was down a similiar percentage after news emerged that the European Union, Canada, Japan, Mexico and South Korea are all meeting next week to discuss potential repercussions to Trump’s trade tariffs.

The overnight Asian trading session closed mixed to positive with the Japanese Nikkei-225 index managing to end up slightly at +0.04% after the Bank Of Japan announced they were keeping their monetary policy steady. The Shanghai Composite, ASX-200 and South Korean Kospi also finished in positive territory after a shaky start.

Oil markets ended Monday’s session on a positive note, Brent Crude closed up by 68 cents at $75:49 although there is a negative slant this  morning after an OPEC report has revealed their output has risen in July to its highest for 2018.  Output reached 32.62 million barrels per day in July, a rise of over 70,000 barrels per day although a cut in production looks likely for August/September to keep values in check.

Gold is on the decline once again and looks to be heading for the minor support area around $1212 (currently $1218:57) if it does fall that far today you can expect a small bullish reversal.

Trading Diary:

15:25pm   Although I had originally planned to be at home all day, I’ve been out for most of it but I will be watching my charts now for a few hours so I will let you know if I do end up taking any trades.

16:10pm     Just taken a ‘long’ position on my 15-min GOLD chart, it’s a Master-The-Trend Strategy-B set-up with a 19 pip stop loss.

17:40pm    Just closed off my GOLD position at 1228.24 which is right on the 10-day moving average where price has found resistance previously. My score is +64 pips giving me a grand total for July of +356 pips.