08:45am  ~  After a full day & evening in London yesterday I am spending the day at home today, so there maybe some trades to report on later – I will be watching my charts and doing some emails as well.  I also have three Skype calls this morning with people who are learning to trade.

Having experienced its worst decline in over two months at the beginning of the week, yesterday’s US equity market rally was the best performance so far this year, and was largely attributed to a 0.2% improvement in US retail sales for December, which was better than the 0.1% reading markets had been expecting. The S&P500 bounced off the support I mentioned yesterday and now looks set for the 1850 level.

Any rise in U.S. retail sales is considered a catalyst for economic growth, so yesterday’s increase triggered some bargain hunting in the energy sector on expectations of oil consumption picking up. The WTI crude prices gained $1 to $92.56 a barrel, throwing aside worries over the extra output from Libya or Iran where the regime started to co-operate with the West. Over here Brent did not join in the enthusiasm and came down onto the long term support level at $106, will we see a rebound today ?

10:10am  ~  I’m back from a cycle ride now so I’m going to get busy in the study with some chart watching plus some Skype calls.

12:15pm  ~  I usually watch just four charts when trading and the only thing I can see happening at the moment is a possible UTB opportunity on Brent Oil, I will let you know later what happens.

13:00pm  ~  The Brent Oil set-up did come off in the end and I’m currently long in the market with a 28 pip stop-loss.

15:40pm  ~  The Brent Oil price has shot up in the last hour and a half and I’ve just closed the position off at 107.05 giving me a 90 pip profit. Off to do some errands but I shall be back around 5pm to trade my evening system for a few hours.

17:55pm  ~  I’ve been watching my S&P500 chart for half an hour now, and I’m in a ‘long’ trade with my “Trade With A Day Job” strategy, currently the position is at break even.

18:30pm  ~  I have just been stopped out of the market at minus 16 pips and normally I would look for another trade to recover the loss but we are off for a Chinese meal with friends at 7 o’clock so I’m switching my charts off now.

Daily Target Reached ?  YES  (+74 pips)