08:35am     The plan for today is a quiet time here at home catching up on emails and also doing some chart watching from time to time – any trades I take will be detailed below in my Trading Diary.   (see below for my 1st trade of the day)

Market Update:

Markets are generally looking quite upbeat at the moment with the Tech-centred Nasdaq experiencing another record close last night after Amazon shares reached a new high and Netflix rebounded from the previous session’s fall.  The Dow Jones and S&P-500 were both in a bullish mood for most of yesterday and closed ahead by 0.22% and 0.40% respectively.

The overnight Asian trading session closed mixed despite some optimism from traders following upbeat comments earlier in the day from Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell concerning the state of the U.S. economy.  Both Chinese markets closed in the red after a good start as did Malaysian and Korean bourses but the Australian ASX-200 and Japanese Nikkei-225 index managed to find buyers in the latter half of the session and finished up around 0.50%.

Oil markets continue to fall yesterday after the American Petroleum Institute released figures which they say confirms a rise in U.S. Crude Inventories rose last week despite officially recognised numbers not due for release until later today. Brent Crude fell 28 cents by the close last night to finish at $71.65 and is marginally down this morning by a few cents.  Gold prices finished at a one year low last night after Fed Chairman Powell said that the U.S. Central Bank is still on course to riase interest rates steadily through the rest of 2018 and the beginning of 2019.  It fell $12.50 during yesterday’s session to end at $1227.96 and is further down this morning at $1223.70

Trading Diary:

08:40am  I entered a ‘short’ GOLD position a while ago, details to follow in a minute.

08:45am    My GOLD trade is a Master-The-Trend Strategy-A pattern with a 10 pip stop loss.

13:10pm    The GOLD price has not dropped as expected through this morning’s session so I have closed the position with a minimal  +16 pip profit ahead of the U.S. trading session open in a short while.  Off out for lunch now.

14:45pm   Back from lunch but the sun is shining so I shall be outdoors for the rest of the day.  I will send out today’s trading information email shortly together with a chart screenshot of my only trade of the day