09:20am  Relaxed start to my last trading day of the week and I am planning to be here at home this morning catching up on emails and doing some chart watching from time to time before leaving for a short trip away until Tuesday. Any trades I take will be detailed below in my Trading Diary.

Market Update:

U.S. equity markets were on good form yesterday on upbeat corporate earnings, Walmart and Cisco Systems were stand-out performers as the Dow Jones 3o index rose by 187 points 9+0.80%) by the close – the wider S&P-500 index was up by a similiar percentage. The overnight Asian trading session ended mixed after initially rising on the back of the strong Wall Street performance but gradually came off the highs by the end of the night. Hong Kong and Japanese markets were most bullish by the close with the main Chinese Shanghai Composite ending down by 0.50% as traders closed off positions and took profits ahead of the weekend break.

Oil values has settled after a week of declines over worries about rising U.S. production and once the price hit the 20-day moving average it stalled for a few days but it is rising once again as OPEC has reiterated their commitment over restricting their own production for the next six months or so. U.S. WTI Crude closed last night at $55:24 and is now up by 65 cents at $55:89.  Gold has still not established a trend yet with volumes lower than usual as traders continue to concentrate on equities at the moment. It has been travelling in a narrow trading band between $1265 and $1290 as mentioned yesterday and has yet to show any signs of breaking out one way or the other.

Trading Diary:

13:05pm    I’ve been watching my charts on and off for the past 3-hours and there’s been no interesting opportunities so I am now switching my screens off and retiring for the week.  Back here early Tuesday morning.