08:05am  ~  I arrived back home yesterday evening, too late really to do much trading although I did look at an S&P500 chart around 8pm but low volume and restricted movement in a narrow band made trading very uninviting.  I shall be around the house this morning catching up on emails and watching a few charts before I am off to Gran Canaria tomorrow to spend a week with a trader friend of mine.

The Dow Jones had a mainly down day yesterday after reaching what seems to be a major support/resistance line around 16220 on Monday. Over in UK it was a completely different story in London as the the FTSE 100 ended up 60 points at 6,796 points, close to this year’s high reached in the 3rd week of January. It has now risen in nine of the last 10 sessions, taking its total gain over that period to 5.4 percent. That is its best run since October, and leaves it up 0.7 percent year-to-date but it now faces psychological resistance at 6,800. Today traders will be waiting on the Bank Of England’s monthly MPC meeting minutes as well as latest unemployment numbers.

Continued cold weather in the U.S. seems to be staying so demand for crude products such as heating oil and diesel pushed WTI prices up $1.41 to $101.53 and expected inventories at Cushing, Oklahoma are expected to come in lower than usual, so giving values another boost this week.

10:35am  ~  Just got back from an invigorating cycle ride and I’ve now got two Skype calls plus a meeting with builders before lunch. Not going to have much chance to look at charts, but this afternoon may quieten down a bit for me.

15:10pm  ~  Back indoors after a lunch out, I’m going to switch my charts on and see what pops up in the next few hours.

16:15pm  ~  I have just got into a ‘short’ Gold position with a 25 pip stop loss. It’s a UTB set-up from my “Any-Time” system manual.

17:10pm  ~  I am still in the Gold trade and now I have also opened a long position on my S&P500 chart with one of the “Trade With A Day Job” strategies.

17:35pm  ~  My 1st S&P trade has been stopped out at minus 26 pips, and I am now in a 2nd trade on the same chart.

19:15pm  ~  I had planned on coming out of both trades just before 7 o’clock due to the FOMC meeting, but I am cooking supper for friends here in the kitchen while I’m also watching my trades, so they’ve over run slightly. The markets have become quite volatile but I have managed to get out with a small profit on the Gold position (+21 pips) and a 50 pip profit on the 2nd S&P500 trade.

Daily Target Reached ?  YES  (+45 pips)