08:10am  ~  I have a few hours here at home this morning replying to emails and then we’re off  Christmas shopping in London for the the rest of the day.

There was a brief respite in the equity market sell-off yesterday when better than expected U.S. manufacturing data gave a boost to the Dow Jones and S&P 500 indices, but in the end the ongoing Crude Oil story dragged everything down again as the sea of red numbers below shows.  The United Arab Emirates Energy Minister Al Mazrouei joined in the argument for the first time yesterday by stating that OPEC would be ‘comfortable’ even if Crude Oil came down to $40 per barrel and this gives us some indication of how serious the Middle Eastern oil producers are to maintain their market share with the hope they will also destroy the U.S. shale boom in its infancy.  WTI Crude fell just over a dollar by the end of yesterday’s session and finished at $55:41.

The Euro experienced a volatile trading session yesterday amid fears that there’s going to be another Greek tragedy after Bond yields have shot up in Greece – previous experience has shown that nearly all Eurozone countries are inextricably linked so when one falls the rest usually follow.  Gold is also suffering even though equities are struggling, there are rumours that there maybe an early hike in U.S. interest rates and this will inevitably affect the money flow into this safe-haven asset.

Market Close Monday 15th December 2014:   Dow Jones 30  -99.99 @ 17,180.84  S&P 500  -12.70 @ 1,983.63  NASDAQ  -41.87 @ 4,157.42  FTSE 100  -117.91 @ 6,182.72  UK AIM  -6.72 @ 686.40  DAX 30  -260.72 @ 9,334.01  CAC 40  -103.55 @ 4,005.38  IBEX  -241.10 @ 9,903.90   Nikkei 225 (Today)  -344.08 @ 16,755.32  Hang Seng (currently)  -270.09 @ 22,757.76

09:55am  ~  I have just entered a ‘long’ position on my UK Brent Crude chart using the UTB pattern — my stop loss is 32 pips.  This will be a quick trade as we’re off in the next hour or so and I’m also trading against the bearish trend that’s overwhelming Crude Oil markets at the moment.

10:20am  ~  I set up a ‘take-profit’ order on my UTB trade just in case I was away while the trade was still running and I’ve just noticed the trade has ended with a score of +32 pips. No more trades now, we’re off soon for the rest of the day.