09:20am    Nice relaxed start to my trading day this morning and with wet, dismal weather forecast for the rest of the day I shall be indoors in front of my charts and also catching up on all the emails that have come in while I have been away. Any trades I take will be detailed in my Trading Diary  as usual.

Market Update:

U.S. equity markets took a dive on Wednesday and ended down overall as the tech sector weighed heavily on sentiment after Chinese tech giant Tencent reported a fall in earnings and a relatively gloomy outlook.  The S&P-500 finished at 2,818.37 down 21.59 points (-0.76%) and the Dow Jones 30 fell slightly less at -0.54% by the close last night.

The overnight Asian trading session began negatively after a poor U.S. showing earlier but regained some ground later in the day after China announced it was planning a new round of trade talks with the U.S. which according to official sources is happening within the next two weeks.  Despite a bullish finish to most equity markets in the area, they all finished in negative territory with the South Korean Kospi and Chinese Hang Seng Index performing worst at -0.80%.

Oil markets continued their recent volatility through Wednesday’s session and was generally bearish with the global benchmark Brent Crude falling $1.40 by last night to close the day at $70.97 although there is some bullishness this morning on the U.S./Chinese proposal for trade talks. The markets is still pricing in rising production levels and lower global demand so many traders cannot see Brent rising above $73.00 in the near term which is close to its 20-day moving average.

Gold has had a rollercoaster fall for most of 2018 but we did see some selected buying overnight during the Asian trading session by bargain hunters as the price hit $1160. The U.S. Dollar is softening slightly and traders in London are reporting short covering is also pushing prices up.

Trading Diary:

11:15am   It has been a quiet morning for price movements on my collection of favourite charts but I have now entered a’long’ position on my UK FTSE-100 15-min chart.  It’s a Master-The-Trend Strategy-B set-up with a very reasonable 17 pip stop loss.

14:25pm   Quick update as there’s not much happened on my usual charts today, I am still in my FTSE position and currently it is at -5 pips an there’s no other imminent opportunities on the horizon.

16:20pm   Still nothing to report !  And still in my FTSE position (currently +12 pips)

17:25pm    Eventually the price has risen in the direction I had originally predicted and I have come out of my position with a +25 pip profit.