08:15am   A relaxed start and nice quiet day at home for me today, catching up on emails and doing some chart watching.  Bike ride at some stage as well obviously

Although the Dow Jones 30 did not quite manage it, the wider S&P 500 index did manage another all -time high during intraday trading yesterday when it briefly hit 2126 mainly due to strong commodity prices before falling back down late in the session as traders adjusted their positions ahead of Apple’s quarterly results release after market close. Europe’s markets were generally bullish as well on news that the Greek Government’s negotiation team had been ‘reshuffled’ in a bid to try to reach a hurried settlement with its paymasters before the end of the month when they have to find over a €1billion to public sector pay workers and cover other costs.

As I am writing this there is news out of BP’s latest figures which have come in ahead of expectations, the city was expecting profits of $1.2 billion but have announced $2.6 billion which was helped partly by the recent rise on crude values plus the fact that over the past 6 months they have been making the company much more lean after the enormous costs involved with the Gulf Of Mexico oil spill in 2010. A weak U.S. Dollar has once again helped the value of Gold and yesterday’s session was another such occasion, it rose over $23 by the end of the day and is now above the $1200 level again, so it is now at a critical level and can go either way in the next few days.

Market Close Monday 27th April 2015:   Dow Jones 30  +21.45 @ 18,080.14  S&P 500  +4.76 @ 2,117.699  NASDAQ  +59.71 @ 4,536.78  FTSE 100  +17.03 @ 7,070.70  UK AIM  +2.45 @ 753.43  DAX 30  +87.27 @ 11,810.85  CAC 40  +22.54 @ 5,201.45  IBEX   +79.60 @ 11,505.40   Nikkei 225 (Today)  -69.42 @ 19,950.62  Hang Seng (currently)  +408.84 @ 28,469.82

08:25am   Just looking through my selection of favourite charts and the only thing that is possibly setting up is a support/resistance ‘Magic-Line’ pattern on Brent Crude.

08:40am    I am now in a ‘long’ Brent Crude position with a 29 pip stop loss.

10:10am   Brent price still going strong, my trade is currently at +14 pips.

11:00am    Off out with a neighbour on a cycle ride in a minute so I’ve closed my trade off – it has managed +63 pips.

14:50pm   Just got into a ‘short’ position on my Dax 30 chart – it’s a trendFX trade with a 68 pip stop loss, slightly higher than normal.

19:25pm    We are off out for the evening in a short while so I have just closed off my Dax trade at +70 pips. It has been higher but I have been outside in the garden for most of the afternoon so missed closing it off earlier with a bigger profit but no matter as I have still managed around 1:1.  Total for the day’s trading has therefore come in at +133 pips.