07:35am   Just emailed my daily ‘Trading-Guidance’ sheet to subscribers and today it’s back to normal with some chart watching after another funeral yesterday. If I have any trades through the day I will report details here – although off for a cycle ride with a neighbour first for a few hours.

Market Update:

Markets in Asia were bullish overnight with the Chinese Shanghai Composite Index rising 5% during Wednesday’s session and Hong Hong and Japanese indices ending up by similiar amounts with rumours on a few trading floors that the Chinese Government are intervening in the market to buoy confidence. This optimism will more likely help European markets for the first few hours this morning and U.S. equity futures are moving positively early this morning. Disappointing economic numbers out of the U.S. yesterday in the form of Empire State Manufacturing Index and Retail Sales gave traders a reason to think that the Fed will not raise interest rates tomorrow and this sentiment boosted equities with the leading Dow Jones 30 index finishing on Tuesday evening 225 points up (+1.40%)

Wednesday’s session is important for oil traders as we have the U.S. Crude Oil Inventory numbers released this afternoon (UK time) which shows the change in the stock situation over the past week at the oil storage facility at Cushing, Wyoming. There is expected to be a small rise over the past 7 days of under a million barrels today and the actual difference to this estimate will give commodity traders a clue to which way they should be trading for the rest of the week. Yesterday’s trading session was fairly positive with the U.S. WTI Crude ending the day up 80 cents at $45:14 and this morning there is a slight rise on the level. Gold is continuing its bearish trend and lost nearly $4 on the day to finish last night at $1104:70 although some bargain hunters have emerged during the overnight Asian session and the price is currently sitting at $1107:60.

Trading Diary:

10:05am   Just got back and I can straight away see a possible UTB trade pattern setting up on the Gold chart and also a trendFX trade on my FTSE 100 chart.

10:10am   I am in a ‘long’ position on my FTSE 100 chart (15 pip stop loss) but nothing has happened yet with the potential Gold trade.

10:30am    Out of my position at the large number of 6200 now – small profit of 20 pips.  The earlier UTB possibility did not develop.

10:40am    Break from chart watching and emails/Skype calls for a few hours while I help a friend who’s fixing up an old Bentley.

23:45pm   Have been out for most of the day doing car restorations so no more trades to report