09:30am   A lazy start this morning after a busy few days and I am planning a quiet time at home catching up on emails and doing some chart watching – any trades I take will be detailed below in my Trading Diary.

Market Update:

Global markets are reacting to the latest U.S. Fed minutes which showed that Federal reserve members regarded the rising inflation situation and increased economic growth as justification to keep the rate rises coming fairly quickly in 2018. This news sent the Dow Jones 30 index falling by 167 points (-0.67%) last night to close at 24,797.78 after rising over 300 points earlier in the session and the wider S&P index of top 500 companies fell marginally less at -0.55%. The U.S. Central Bank sees inflation reaching its 2% target but does not foresee any unexpected spikes so the expected 3 interest rate hikes looks to be on the cards and this has given strength to the Dollar once again and dampened any enthusiasm for buying Gold. The yellow metal fell $5.60 by the close yesterday and is further down this morning at $1322.80 and I have given customers a target of $1310 to watch for.

The overnight Asian trading session continued the earlier bearishness and markets from most areas in the region closed slightly down although the Nikkei-225 was the biggest loser of the night, falling over 1% by the close. The Australian ASX-200 swung between losses and gains for most of the session but eventually closed up by a small margin (+0.12%) with banking stocks helping pull the index out of negative territory.

Oil values fell slightly this morning as the U.S. Dollar firms up following the Fed announcement last night, U.S. WTI Crude Oil closed down by 24 cents at $61.28 last night and is now at $61.22. Expect some volatility in the Crude Oil charts today as the U.S. Crude Inventory numbers are released in about 5-hours.

Trading Diary:

12:20pm   I have nothing to report so far from this morning’s session although there was a ‘long’ trade on the WTI Crude Oil which triggered while I was out for a run which already hit its first target.

13:45pm   Just taken a Master-The-Trend Strategy-B position on my S&P-500 30-min chart. The stop loss is 45 pips which reasonable for the timeframe considering the current daily range.  There was another trade that’s just triggered on the WTI Crude chart but it is getting close to the Crude Oil Inventories announcement time so I  have left it alone, I am already in one ‘risky’ trade as it is — S&P at U.S. trading session start !

14:50pm  The S&P price has become more volatile than is normal for this time of the day and although the price has risen to over 2726 it has fallen back quite sharply and I am out at 2715.80 giving me an +88 pip profit.  Normally I would finish now with such an encouraging score for the day but I am in the office until late today for various reasons so I shall continue to watch my collection of favourite charts while getting on with other things.

15:20pm    I’ve just got into a ‘short’ position on my Brent Crude Oil 15-min chart – more details soon.

15:30pm    Details of the above trade:  Master-The-Reversal  UTB price-reversal set-up with small 19 pip stop loss. Although the Crude Oil Inventories are due soon the UTB pattern is very prominent and almost perfect (if you can ever say a pattern is ‘perfect’) plus the risk is negligible bearing in mind my score so far today.

16:05pm  Well that was quick !  The Brent trade has just been stopped out at -19 pips.  If I had been watching the trade over the last 15 minutes I could have closed it off with a reasonable profit but I was outside doing some dog training.  No matter, still an acceptable +69 pip profit for the day and will probably turn off my charts now.