07:55am   My trading year starts today, I shall be here at home for most of the day catching up on emails and doing some chart watching from time to time. Any trades I have will be reported here through the day.

Market Update:

After yesterday’s negative start to 2016 in the markets, expectations are for some normality today.  The large falls in Chinese shares was caused by a number of reasons which started with weak manufacturing numbers which caused an initial fall in indices. The second reason was an expectation that major investors and companies are going to offload large amounts of shares later this week after the government banned them in July from short selling for six months – this restriction is due to be lifted on Friday and traders are bracing themselves for further falls although there are now rumours that this restriction maybe kept in place to stabilise the market.  There is also a safety net for Chinese equities when they fall over 7% in one day and when this occurs, trading will be halted for the remainder of the session, this was triggered early yesterday but today we are also seeing further falls.

Here is Europe we experienced a mainly bearish day on the first trading session of the new year and this morning’s price action is showing further falls after the overnight Asian session was largely negative as well. In the U.S. both main indices ended in the red, the wider S&P500 lost over 1.5% by the close, falling 31.28 points to 2012.66.  Increasing tensions in the Middle East between Saudi Arabia and Iran that now seems to be spreading across further countries caused concerns in oil production gave U.S. WTI Crude an early session boost from $37:00 upto a high of $38:30 although the price has dropped back down and is currently trading at $36:69 as news that Saudi oil producers want to force the price back down to punish Iran for the attack on their embassy in Tehran.

Trading Diary:

08:55am   At the moment I can only see just one possible trade developing on my group of six favourite charts – the price on my WTI Crude chart looks to be reversing upwards with two-thirds of a UTB pattern.

09:10am   The WTI price has risen far enough to trigger a ‘long’ trade so I am now in a UTB trade with a 16 pip stop loss.

10:00am    Out of my trade now, the WTI price has reversed at 36.92 and I have managed to cover my risk with a +16 pip profit. A trendFX pattern may complete in a minute so I could be back in the market.

10:20am   I got into a ‘short’ position on my WTI Crude chart a short while ago, this time my stop loss is 17 pips.

12:30pm   Lunch is beckoning at the Lord Nelson so I’ve just closed off my 2nd WTI position — it has ended up at +29 pips.  I will send out some chart screenshots showing full details of my trades to students when I get back.

15:05pm   Been back home for half an hour or so but no trade opportunities have shown up so I’m closing my charts off and going for a cycle ride.