10:00am   After being out for most of yesterday, I am planning to be indoors in my home office catching up on emails and doing some chart watching today so any trades I take will be detailed below in my Trading Diary.

Market Update:

Yesterday’s equity markets in Europe and the U.S. were generally bullish on the back of encouraging performances in the retail sector including UK company Ocado which has just announced a major deal with U.S. grocer Kroger. The Dow Jones 30 closed up by 62 points with Macy’s and Nike helping boost the performance of the index and the S&P-500 and Nasdaq indices also closed ahead after a negative start.

The overnight Asian trading session was mixed at best with traders concentrating on U.S./China trade talks and the upcoming meeting between North Korea and the U.S.  Most of the major markets in the region were down this morning at the close although the Japanese Nikkei-225 index finished narrowly in the black (+0.53%) after disappointing Core Machinery Orders numbers announced earlier in the session.

Oil markets are holding firm after a good run up, many traders are expecting Brent Crude to fall now from the high achieved this week ($79.35) but already this morning there are optimistic signs that the UK benchmark will get to $80 before the close of the week’s trading.  Morgan Stanley has raised its price forecast for the next 2 years to $90 per barrel and this is partly fuelling the buying of futures contracts.

Trading Diary:

10:40am   I have just taken a ‘short’ position on my GOLD 15-min chart, it is a Master-The-Trend Strategy-A pattern with a 12 pip stop loss.

11:35am   Just taken a quick +24 pip profit from my GOLD position as I have been invited out for an early lunch.

14:05pm   Back home now and taken a ‘long’ position on my German DAX-30 30-min chart using one of the simpler Master-The-Trend patterns. My stop loss is 32 pips.

14:35pm    As is usual at this time of the day, there is a fair amount of price volatility and the DAX chart’s movement is no exception so I have taken a minimal profit and come out of my position with a +32 pip profit.

16:00pm   I am back home after a run and now I’ve glanced at my collection of favourite charts and there’s nothing much happening so I am closing the screens now. Back tomorrow morning.