07:50am  Planning a day at home today with meetings and Skype calls but also some chart watching from time to time. Any trades I have will be reported below in my Trading Diary.

Market Update:

Despite continuing aggression from North Korea, the markets are shrugging off concerns for the region and have surged forward in the past 24hrs. U.S. equity markets closed ahead on Tuesday with the Dow Jones-30 index closing almost 57 points up (+0.26%) and the overnight Asian trading session was equally as bullish with average gains of between 0.50% to 0.75% across the board.  Traders have shifted their focus from the Korean issue across to problems in Texas and the damage left in the wake of tropical storm Harvey.  Oil refining has been heavily hit and stocks in that sector are sharply down again and this is going to affect the U.S. oil stock situation as less crude is being processed.

The UK equity market has been quite volatile in the past week or so and this is partly due to low trading volumes because of summer holidays but there is also no clear roadmap emerging for Britain to leave the EU and until this becomes more clear you can expect the FTSE-100 to oscillate wildly with no clear trend.  Although recent price moves have been unpredictable there does seem to be a fairly strong support around the 7300 level so watch for further reactions if price does drop that low this week – it’s currently sitting at 7368 now and we could see price near 7400 sometime today.

Gold has benefited from the uneasiness in Asia resulting from the unpredictable behaviour of the North Korean leader, it rose almost $17 on Monday but reversed around $1325 yesterday and now looks to be moving down towards the support/resistance level at $1295 – watch for trading opportunities here.

Trading Diary:

08:45am   Just entered a ‘long’ position on my Gold 15-min chart, it’s a UTB price-reversal pattern and my stop loss is a very reasonable 15 pips.

10:00am   Off out for a cycle ride, not much else happening on my usual charts.  Leaving my stop loss at 15 pips but target not set.

11:15am   Back from cycle ride and trade doing ok at the moment (+28 pips) so I will stay in a little longer and see what occurs.  I have brought the stop loss upto break even for protection.

11:50am   The Gold price has risen well and I am more than happy with the current +54 pip score so I am now out of my position.

11:55am   Off for early lunch now and as I have amasses a decent score this morning I am switching off my charts for the rest of the day.   Back here tomorrow morning.