08:15am    I am here at home all morning and part of the afternoon so any trades I find will be detailed below.

Market Update:

Markets on both sides of the Atlantic are looking fairly bullish at the moment following remarks from U.S. President Trump in which he is promising to cut financial regulation that was put in place after the global crash in 2007/2008.  Traders are also eyeing up the forthcoming meeting between Donald Trump and the Chinese President Xi Jinping where they will be discussing trade and North Korean concerns, sentiment is generally upbeat ahead of the two leaders attempting to solve a variety of problems, not least is the problem of Kim Jong-un and his global ambitions of nuclear supremacy.

The overnight Asian trading session ended positively on the whole and this is spilling over to the start of the European session where focus is on the French elections at the moment. The Far Right candidate Marine Le Pen is seen as losing traction which is good for stability within the EU and if she ultimately loses the vote, it will discourage others who are interested in leaving the European economic club.

Crude oil is seeing a slight resurgence and has risen well over the last couple of weeks.  U.S. WTI Crude found solid support at $47.00 and is now trading around the $51.40 level although we could see some profit taking today/tomorrow. There will also be some volatility as we wait for the weekly U.S. stock numbers, there is an expectation of slight fall in the inventories over the last 7-days.

Trading Diary:

10:10am    Nothing to report from my charts and the sun is shining outside so I am off for a cycle ride for a few hours.

12:15pm    I’ve just got into a ‘long’ position in my WTI Crude Oil chart, its a Master-The-Trend Strategy-A pattern with a 10-pip stop loss.  The Crude Oil Inventory numbers are being released soon so it’s not an ideal time to get into a trade with this instrument but I will show you a way to do it while also reducing the risk.

12:25pm    When you are anticipating a fair amount of volatility on a chart that you are currently trading, one way of reducing risk is to slowly bring your stop loss upto break even – but not too quickly as you could see yourself being stopped out prematurely.  It is still too early for me as the position is only at +2 pips but I am watching the price carefully – this is the only time I actually sit on front of my screens for any length of time, usually I will trigger the trade and only return every 30 minutes or so.

12:50pm     Just brought my stop loss upto -5 pips as the score currently at +6 pips.

13:05pm     Now the stop loss is at break even although I will close it off soon as I am due out for lunch soon with friends.

13:25pm     Off out in 5 minutes so I have closed the position off at +20 pips.

15:15pm     Back home now but off again soon so no more trading for me today, back here tomorrow morning for my last day in front of the charts this week.