07:55am   Today is the last trading day of August and I will be at home this morning watching my charts and catching up on emails ahead of a short break from my screens until next Tuesday.

Market Update:

European and U.S. equity markets were mainly optimistic yesterday and on the whole closed ahead on encouraging economic figures that were released through the day. Technology stocks lead the way in the U.S. so although the S&P-500 only rose +0.46% on the day, the tech-heavy Nasdaq index was up by 1.05%.  Employment figures were up with data released yesterday showing around 237,000 jobs were added in August and GDP also showed an increase of 3.0% ahead of the 2.7% estimate.

This optimism on the whole was carried through to the overnight Asian trading session where Chinese Manufacturing PMI figures came in ahead of expectations although Non-Manufacturing numbers were slightly down and contributed to small falls in both Bejing and Hong Kong stock exchange indices.  The oil industry is continuing to be affected by the adverse weather in Texas with 24% of U.S. oil refining capacity now shutdown which has caused petroleum futures to rise more than expected and should also have a negative effect on crude oil values, U.S. WTI Crude fell 48 cents during yesterday’s trading session to close at $46:31 and is further down this morning at $45:93.

Gold has come off its highs slightly as traders move over to equities, it touched a high of $1325:80 on Tuesday but suffered a negative session yesterday to close at $1308:35 and is $3:40 down from that level this morning – expect further falls today, although price action on the 4-hour chart is fairly bullish at the moment.

Trading Diary:

11:10am   Just taken a ‘long’ position on my Brent Crude Oil chart, it’s a Master-The-Trend Strategy-B pattern on the 15-min timeframe with an 11 pip stop loss.  This will be a fairly quick trade I would imagine as I am off at lunchtime.

13:05pm   I am off in a short while for the rest of the day so I have closed my position at +20 pips and today’s small profit means my overall point total for August is +510 pips.  As mentioned earlier this morning, I am now away from my screens until next Tuesday.