07:55am   Back to a fairly normal ‘working’ day after a long weekend break and I am planning to be at home catching up on emails and doing some chart watching as well. Any trades I take will be detailed below in my Trading Diary.

Market Update:

All three of the major U.S. indices reached record highs once again yesterday with JP Morgan Chase leading the climb in shares with a 2% rise by the close. Other tech shares in the spotlight are Apple and Netflix with the latter showing that subscribers are growing at a larger than expected rate and this sentiment drove the Nasdaq up by 0.3% last night to 6624.  The overnight Asian trading session was also quite bullish on the back of the positive U.S. close and higher commodity prices, copper and oil rose on Monday but have yet to retreat back on profit taking. The Australian ASX-200 finished up by 0.7% as it is heavily weighted with commodity and banking shares.

Crude oil made gains yesterday as risk returns to the market with supply concerns in Iraq due to renewed fighting in the region and reports that Kurds have closed production from major fields in Avana and Bai Hassan because of security concerns so around 350,000 barrels per day have been taken away from the market. U.S. WTI Crude closed up 49 cents last night at $51:90 and is trading around that level this morning.

Gold had a good run last week and rose over $43 over the past six sessions but it reversed at $1305:80 yesterday as traders diverted cash into equities instead.  It is further down this morning after the overnight Asian trading session and is currently sitting at $1290.05.

Trading Diary:

09:10am   I have just entered a ‘short’ position on my FTSE-100 15-min chart, it’s a Master-The-Trend Strategy-B set-up with a 14 pip stop loss.

11:00am   Back from a cycle ride and seen that my FTSE position has been stopped out at -14 pips.

13:10pm   A Master-The-Trend set-up has just triggered on my GOLD 15-min chart, it’s a Strategy-A pattern and I have a 15 pip stop loss.

16:15pm   The GOLD price has fallen sharply as equity markets have risen so I have now closed my ‘short’ position, my score is +63 pips giving me an overall +49 pips for the day. As it’s late in the afternoon I am closing off my charts for the day, back here early tomorrow morning.