08:50am   I am sending the next couple of days here at home doing some chart watching and catching up on Skype calls/emails ahead of a week’s holiday starting on Friday.

Market Update:

European and U.S. markets rose on Tuesday after reports circulated that China and the U.S. are in the process of organising talks in an attempt to diffuse the current impasse regarding trade tariffs. Both the Dow Jones 30 and S&P-500 posted their largest monthly gains since January and the Nasdaq tech index also finished the month ahead by over 2%, these rises across the board are attributed to bullish corporate earnings together with strong economic data for July.

The overnight Asian trading session closed fairly positively on news regarding the possible U.S./China trade talks, the Japanese Nikkei-225 index finished the day 193 points up at 22,746.71 on a falling Yen which helped exporters so Car Manufacturers were major winners of the session together with banks.  Both Chinese bourses ended negatively however as traders were wary of trade tariff rumours which had initially boosted the markets.

Oil took a hit yesterday as U.S. crude stock showed an unexpected rise, WTI Crude fell $1.62 by the close last night to $67.98 and is a few cents lower this morning as today’s official Weekly U.S. Crude Oil Inventories are going to confirm these figures.  Brent Crude has fallen over 6% in value in July, its biggest monthly drop since this time two years ago.  Gold ended Tuesday’s session fairly flat and seems to have halted the decline that has affected the yellow metal since April and there is not expected to be much trading volume today until the Federal Reserve release their meeting minutes at 19:00 GMT tonight.

Trading Diary:

09:10am    I am in a ‘long’ position on my 30-min GOLD chart, it’s a Master-The-Reversal UTB pattern with a reasonable 20 pip stop loss.

09:55am   Just taken a quick +21 pip profit from the GOLD position.

10:25am  Nothing much on my charts currently so I am off for a 20-mile cycle ride.

13:50pm   I have scanned my charts now I’m back from lunch and there’s nothing much happening at the moment so I am going to switch my screens off and go an enjoy the sunshine. Back here normal time tomorrow.