09:20am  ~  After a very late night at a card evening, I am having a slow start this morning.  I have still have some emails to catch up on plus 4 Skype calls this morning so I shall probably be here in the study until lunchtime.

The markets had a mixed day yesterday, the Dow Jones 30 had a generally down day and although the S&P500 had a flurry after the U.S. session opened, all those gains were knocked out by overnight news from China regarding a deterioration in their economy according to the HSBC Manufacturing PMI. It is the first time the index has been below 50 since last summer and the markets took the fall to 49.6 as a early warning signal that the Chinese economy may be contracting.

Gold has broken through a small support level and dropped $4 to $1237 so there may well be further falls to come for the rest of the week

09:40am  ~  The price on my Gold chart has reversed from yesterday’s falls and is rising quite quickly, and I have managed to get in to the market with a long position.

11:15am ~  My S&P500 chart has just had a UTB set-up appear, so I am now short on the index with a 29 pip stop loss.

13:50pm  ~  I am off for a quick cycle ride in a minute, I’m getting rather ‘twitchy’ after sitting here all morning, so my stops are set on the two positions I am in and we’ll see how they develop over the next hour or so.

15:00pm  ~  I’m back home and both trades are still doing ok, the S&P position is at +79 pips and the Gold trade is currently running at +192 pips.

17:55pm  ~  It now looks like the S&P500 is going to give me a short’ trade with my “Trade With A Day Job” evening strategy – and I am still in the other two trades as well. We are off out at 7:30pm tonight, so I’ve only got another hour or so in the market.

19:10pm  ~  I am now out of all three positions, the Gold trade that kicked off earlier this morning has achieved +230 and the S&P500 has been in a bearish trend for most of the day and that has resulted in both trades on that index coming in as winners as well. My first trade gave me +162 pips and the second +40 pips.

Daily Target Reached ?   YES  (+432 pips)