10:25am   After a short break away I am planning a quiet day here at home catching up on emails and doing some chart watching. It’s a late start to the day as I’ve been out with some neighbours on a 25-mile cycle ride already this morning.

Market Update:

U.S. equity markets had a good start to the week as the Dow Jones rallied 399 points during Monday’s session to close at 25,709.79 (+1.58%) with Boeing and 3M providing the biggest share rises, it has now risen over 1100 points in the past 10 trading days going some way to prove that this dramatic downturn at the beginning of February was merely a blip. The S&P-500 and Nasdaq also rose well with average gains of around 1% by the end of the evening. These indices are closing in now on their January highs and many of the large tech stocks such as Alphabet, Apple and Facebook have already returned to their pre-fall levels.

The overnight Asian trading session was not as buoyant though and markets closed mixed although the Japanese Nikkei-225 did close up by 236 points (+1.07%) as traders in other regions took some profits after a good run in the past few days. Gold had a positive session yesterday although it did give up some of its gains late in the day, it rose $6.05 by the end of the evening to close at $1333.70 and is still using the 5-day moving average as support so watch for trading opportunities around this level.

Oil rose on Monday for a fourth session in a row to hit levels not seen since the beginning of this month. U.S. WTI Crude closed the session 42 cents up at $63.92 on news that production restraint by OPEC members and Russia are still in place and there has also been a slight decline in U.S. production. This week’s Crude Oil Inventories will show if this is having a lasting effect on values.

Trading Diary:

10:50pm   There could be a ‘short’ trade opportunity coming up on my German DAX-30 chart.

11:00am   The DAX trade has triggered and I am now in a ‘short’ position with a 34 pip stop loss  — it’s a Master-The-Trend Strategy-B set-up.

11:45am   Just taken a quick +35 pip profit, I think the price still has further to fall but it could go back upto my stop loss level first.

12:00pm  Off now for early lunch then out with friends for a 5k run afterwards.

16:50pm  It’s been such a sunny afternoon, I have been outside since lunchtime so no further trading to report. Back in front of my screens at the usual time tomorrow morning.