07:15am  ~  I am bright and early this morning as I have some errands to do before I am off after lunch for four days skiing in Chamonix with a couple of trader friends. Firstly I am going to spend a couple of hours in the study clearing up some loose ends while watching my charts now and then.

The main indices had a sell-off yesterday seemingly in response to U.S. Jobless Claims together with lower new house sales. This coupled with news from China earlier sent the Dow Jones 30 down 161 points to end at 16208. It would appear that traders have watched the struggle to break previous highs from the beginning of the month and decided that was probably a resistance level so are now profit-taking while the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos try to come up with some form of consensus.

As often happens, the slump in the main markets caused a flurry of buyers to get into Gold and the price shot up $27 by the close to $1264.21, it’s highest level since the middle of last month.

08:10am  ~  I wasn’t really looking to get into any trades this morning, but a UTB set-up appeared a bit earlier on my S&P500 chart and I’ve just managed to get into the market ‘short’ at a decent level, actually a bit better than if I had entered as the trade was triggered.  The stop loss is just 12 pips.

12:25pm  ~  I have just come out of my S&P500 position as I’m off for lunch at the Lord Nelson, the index has come down quite well and I have finished with a profit of +125 pips. Another success for the UTB set-up.

Daily Target Reached ?  YES (+125 pips)