07:50am   Early start for me today as we are planning a London shopping trip after lunch. Any trades I find this morning will be detailed below in my Trading Diary.

Market Update:

Tuesday’s European trading session ending mainly higher with tech stocks leading the way with a rise of 1.6% by the close and later in the day the U.S. markets also finished the day ahead with the Dow Jones index of 30 leading companies ending the session at over 118 points ahead.  This rise was down mainly to surges in Boeing and Verizon shares through the day and also a growing optimism that Republican lawmakers will be able to push through corporate tax reforms which is going to have a positive effect on companies balance sheets.

The overnight Asian trading session ended mixed at best with most bourses treading water as the Federal Reserve interest rate decision gets closer. The South Korean President Moon Jae-in began a 4-day visit to China so traders will be watching press announcements with interest to see if significant resolutions emerge regarding their rogue neighbour and its unpredictable leader. Gold is also trading sideways overnight after a volatile session on Tuesday as traders await the Fed’s rate decision, it is now at $1242:15, up from yesterday’s 5-month low of $1236:30.

Oil is also fairly volatile as traders grapple with conflicting news that’s causing large bearish and bullish moves. There are concerns over North Sea supplies being restricted by the failure of the Forties oil pipeline that brings crude into the UK for refining but on the other hand there is expected to be a larger draw down of U.S. crude stocks this week which should be confirmed later today by the weekly Crude Oil Inventories report. Brent crude has enjoyed a large rise this week from the Forties Pipeline news and pushed the price above $65 for the first time since 2015 but there was a fair amount of profit taking yesterday which brought the price down.

Trading Diary:

09:40am   I have just taken a ‘short’ position on my GOLD 15-min chart, it’s a Master-The-Trend Strategy-B set-up with a 17 pip stop loss.

10:50am   I’m now in a ‘long’ position on my S&P-500 15-min trade and it’s the same set-up as my first trade today. My stop loss is a heady 16 pips !

12:55pm   Just been stopped out of my S&P-500 position at -16 pips.  I am off to London quite soon so keeping my stop loss on the GOLD trade at -17 pips to give the position some space to move as the U.S. markets start trading, not an ideal time to be a position but unfortunately the price did not come down as quickly as expected during the morning session – many traders are sitting on their hands today to see what happens later with U.S. interest rates so volumes are down slightly.

I will be back this evening so will report back then.

20:10pm   Back home now and seen that my GOLD position was stopped out earlier at -17 pips so my overall score for the day came in at -33 pips.