08:10am  ~  A quieter day for me today, I’m here at home this morning doing some emailing/chart watching with a cycle ride at some stage before lunch.

Gold down, Oil prices up – no wonder the markets felt jittery and had a bit of a down day yesterday. U.S. equities were particularly badly hit after better than expected PMI figures suggested to traders that tapering may ended earlier than previously suggested – together with the fact that many investors are looking at their gains this year and perhaps doing some end-of-year profit taking.

Higher than projected Chinese growth numbers early on encouraged Oil traders out of the cupboards and with renewed optimism, they pushed both WTi and Brent Oil prices higher, although the Brent daily chart did hit a resistance level near the end of the European trading session so watch out for short trade opportunities today.  Gold dropped for most of the day, firstly on Chinese growth numbers then the U.S. news, it did not really stand a chance – and there was my observation that the price had hit a solid resistance level yesterday, unfortunately I wasn’t around yesterday to take advantage of the short trade opportunities !

10:35am  ~  Just back from a cycle ride along the river so I’m going to switch on my MT4 charts and watch for any trade set-ups while I do some emailing + 2 Skype calls in the next hour.

12:15pm  ~  I’m in a ‘long’ position on my EUR/USD chart, there’s only a 14 pip stop-loss and just a short time before U.S. traders start their Tuesday trading session so I think this maybe a brief trade.

13:50pm  ~  I have come out of my EUR/USD position as the market has become more volatile – and I’ve hit the 1:1 profit target after waiting a short time to see if it would go higher. A friend has also arrived for lunch so we’re off to Cafe Rouge for an hour or so.

18:05pm  ~  After lunch we stayed in town shopping so I’ve only just had a chance to turn this laptop on and watch my S&P500 chart to see if there any “Trade With A Day Job” set-ups available. I will report back later.

20:55pm  ~  I have just got out of a ‘long’ trade on the S&P500 as the U.S. market is just about to close, I used an “Extra” strategy from the evening system and managed +25 pips.

Daily Target Reached ?  YES  (+39 pips)      I traded for the late morning session plus a few hours this evening