08:40am   Planning on spending the day here at home catching up on emails and watching my charts from time to time. Any trades I find will be detailed below.

Market Update:

Yesterday’s U.S. trading session ended slightly up although army exercises in South Korea and the Jackson Hole Symposium  has put a lid on any big gains.  Traders are unsure of North Korea’s reaction to the annual U.S./South Korean military exercises designed to show solidarity against Kim Jong-un’s regime so there is no big rush to buy at the moment and Friday’s annual meeting at Jackson Hole, Wyoming of central bankers and other financial policy-makers may throw up some surprises for the markets.

The overnight Asian trading session did not fair much better with equity markets ending mixed although the Hang Seng index did out perform all others by closing up over 1% with the help of property stocks in the region.  This morning’s European session has started fairly optimistically with all major indices showing gains on last night’s close.  Gold rose slightly on Monday as Korean tensions were expected to escalate due to the aforementioned military exercises but U.S. Dollar strength in the past few hours has brought the value down – it is currently trading at $1284.15 against a close last night of $1291.80. We could see a further slide towards the 20-day moving average around $1275.00

Crude oil values have stabilised slightly this morning after large falls on Monday – there have been reports today that the U.S. stock situation is tightening with a drop in oil inventories of around 13% from the highs in March this year. U.S. WTI Crude Oil closed last night at $47:54 but is trading up at $47:81 but any further rises could be capped by the 200-day moving average at $48:15.

Trading Diary:

10:35am    I have just entered two positions, they are both Master-The-Trend Strategy-A set-ups and one is on my Gold 15-min chart and the other is on my German DAX-30 15-min chart. The stop losses are 10 pips and 15 pips respectively.

11:45am    Just got back from a cycle ride and seen my Gold position has been stopped out at-10 pips but my Dax trade is still running.

14:05pm   The DAX price has advanced well and I am more than happy with the current score so I am now out of my position with a +71 pip profit.  My total pips for the day is +61 pips which is sufficient for a morning’s work so I am closing off my screens, I will be back here tomorrow morning.   My total score for August is now +307 pips.