08:30am   I am planning a morning here in my home office catching up on emails and doing some chart watching so any trades I have will be reported below. U.S equity markets will have lower volumes today as it’s their President’s Day Bank Holiday.

Market Update:

U.S. and European markets had a good end to last week’s trading and the main S&P index of the 500 leading companies staged another record close, finishing at almost exactly at 2350 on trader and investor hopes that President Trump’s much anticipated tax reform policies will be announced at sometime in the coming few days. These changes to the U.S. tax system are seen to benefit both individuals and companies and are therefore a positive for the economy but exact details are sketchy so we could still some volatility in the coming days across equity markets.

The first Asian trading session of the week closed positively on the back of last week’s optimism although the main Australian ASX-200 index finished down 10 points (-0.18%) after banks and commodities traded lower.  This sentiment has spilled over to this morning’s European open with most bourses gapping up from Friday’s close although London’s FTSE-100 index is showing signs of some selling in the past 30 minutes, it is currently sitting at 7310 having seen 7316 in late futures trading on Friday evening.  It is still some way off the record high of 7358 during the middle of January although if U.S. equities keep up their bullish sentiment this week it should carry UK markets with it.

Crude oil is still going sideways with no real direction, U.S. WTI Crude is stuck in the narrow channel between $50 and $54 as traders cannot decide whether cuts in OPEC production or rising U.S. output will win – the daily chart is looking slightly bullish this morning with its 20-day moving average providing some support.

Trading Diary:

10:10am   Volumes on a lot of my charts are quite low this morning as you would expect with U.S. traders away from their desks, so nothing to report trade-wise yet but it does mean I can have a couple of hours outside in the glorious sunshine on my bike.  Back to the charts after lunch.

14:05pm  Been back home a short while and the only excitement has been a ‘long’ trade on my S&P-500 1-hr chart, it’s a Master-The-Trend Strategy-A set-up and my stop loss is 18 pips which is quite low for this timeframe but it does reflect the very low volumes present today.

14:35pm   The U.S. market is potentially quite unpredictable so I have come out of my trade a few minutes ago as the profit has hit +21 pips and I am more than happy with that today.

15:05pm   Just had a quick look at my collection of favourite charts and price movement is quite limited for the aforementioned reasons so that’s it for me today and I will be back in front of the screens at the usual time tomorrow.