09:30am    Slightly later start today’s trading session after a very busy night in London – but I am planning for a quiet time in my home office watching charts and replying to emails. Any trades I take will be detailed below in my Trading Diary.

Market Update:

Markets are starting to shrug off concerns from the situation in Turkey and the U.S. equity markets closed slightly up on Tuesday evening, the S&P-500 closed at 2,839.96 (+18.03 pips) and the tech-centred Nasdaq index finished the session last night at 7,870.89 (+51.19). This positive sentiment was largely caused by the Turkish Lira bouncing off a 2018 low against the U.S. Dollar and rising over 8% on the day.  Traders and bankers are realising that Turkey is not part of the EU or Eurozone monetary region so the fall-out from their economic situation is not really going to affect other countries in the region that much despite sensationalist press reports over the past few days.

The overnight Asian trading session was not as optimistic however with traders shrugging off positive U.S. market moves earlier.  The Chinese Shanghai Composite index was the largest faller of the evening and ended down by 57.33 pips (-2.06%) and it seems that tech companies were the main drivers of this bearish sentiment but in Japan where the Nikkei-225 closed down by 151.86 points at 22,204.22 after oil and coal sectors providing most of the falls.   Oil markets are continuing to fall this morning after yesterday’s volatile moves which ended last night with losses across both UK and U.S. markets on reports that weekly oil inventories are going to rise today when the official figures are released.  Brent Oil experienced some sharp moves yesterday and moved in a $2 trading range before settling down by 61 cents at $72.93 after experiencing a bearish reversal at its 50-day moving average.

Gold hit a new 18-month low during early morning trading on Wednesday after the U.S. Dollar rose quickly on concerns that the Euro may be exposed to the problems in Turkey although as expected some of these fears are unfounded so both the Euro and the Turkish Lira are rebounding this morning. Gold was largely unchanged on Tuesday night at $1194.20 but is now trading at $1186.76 and looks to be heading for the minor support at $1140.

Trading Diary:

10:10am    Just taken a ‘short’ position on my 30-min German DAX-30 chart.  It’s a UTB price-reversal pattern with a 31 stop loss.

12:05pm   I am now out of my DAX position with a +116 pip profit.  Off for an early lunch now.

14:35pm   Now in another ‘short’position, it’s a Master-The-Trend Strategy-A set-up on my 15-min FTSE-100 chart with a 10 pip stop loss.

15:40pm   The FTSE price has come down nicely and I am happy with the progress of my position so I have just closed the trade off at+37 pips, giving me a total for the day of +153 pips.  Time to switch off my screens I think….