09:15am   Back home after a short break away so I shall be here in the study for most of the day catching up on emails and Skype calls plus doing some chart watching from time to time.

Market Update:

The U.S. equity rally that began when Trump was elected president is now showing signs of slowing with the S&P-500 index ending Monday’s trading session around 0.50% down and has retreated back from the high at 2214 – this level could become a short-term resistance area although futures prices are up in the past few hours.  The overnight Asian session closed mainly down except for the Shanghai Composite which managed to post a small 0.2% rise at the close.

The general optimism over oil values seems to be slowing slightly, traders initially believed that OPEC will agree to a production cut and this sent crude prices higher but as always, when you drill down and think the situation through, another scenario becomes apparent… If OPEC members cut production all that will happen is that other oil producing countries who have been excluded from membership will simply increase their own output so the global over-supply will not change in the long run. So once prices fall, OPEC members will suffer even further so they will have to up production and the price will fall even further.

Markets in Europe are muted this morning on worries regarding this Sunday’s Italian referendum – if Prime Minister Renzi loses the vote he has threatened to resign and this could lead to the rise of the Five Star Movement who favour leaving the Euro. This outcome then leads to other countries within the EU possibly holding referendums too – interesting times…….

Trading Diary:

09:55am  Nothing to see on my collection of favourite charts so far this morning so I am off for a ‘bracing’ cycle ride.

12:25pm   In a ‘short’ position on my WTI Crude chart — more details soon, have had visitors just turned up.

13:00pm   My WTI trade is a trendFX strategy-3 set-up with a higher the normal 46 pip stop loss, this is due to pattern coming up on the one hour timeframe. The position is currently sitting at +29 pips.

13:55pm    The oil market is becoming quite volatile and as my position had reached +71 pips I came out of the trade a couple of minutes ago.

14:45pm   No other opportunities at the moment so I am closing off my charts and finishing my trading for the day as I am more than happy with my score so far  - back here tomorrow for the last trading day of the month.