08:15am  ~  Back to Chelmsford at lunchtime as I have a meeting with builders this afternoon but this morning I shall be here in the kitchen with my laptop doing emails and some chart watching. I will report back later if I have any trades.

After reaching an all time high early on in the week, the S&P500 index continued its fall yesterday and is now looking for some sort of support so as to halt the decline. A weaker than expected rise in the US retail sales together with a bigger than estimated increase in the weekly jobless benefits kept the bears in charge and the Dow Jones 30 also fell, it ended at 16,752 down 107 points.  Interestingly, this index is now sitting around a previous resistance level at 16,725 so we’ll see if that turns into support as is often the way.  A real threat of the break-up of Iraq and all the problems that will follow from that are also weighing heavily on various markets, and although equities are involved, the Crude Oil market is a direct casualty and WTI crude prices rallied sharply yesterday, ending at $106.87 a rise of $2.39 with UK Brent Crude following with a similiar rise.

As you would expect, with investors deserting equity markets there was a rush into safe-haven commodities yesterday and Gold enjoyed a bullish session that ended with a rise of $12.3 to $1273.2. The daily chart is throwing up some interesting patterns – there was an established support level around $1277 throughout April but was comprehensively broken at the end of May. Well we are now banging up against that same level from below, so there maybe some profit taking during the next few sessions.

10:40am  ~  As is often the way on a Friday, there’s not much happening on my charts which means there’s time for a quick cycle ride before lunchtime, then I’m busy with builders all afternoon.