08:25am (07:25 UK time)  ~  Off for a cycle ride in a minute over to Formentor before it gets too hot and then back here to do some emails and chart watching before I am off at 2 o’clock to meet friends for lunch in Soller.

A sea of red has hit markets at the moment – and trading in Asia overnight has added to losses for equity markets as President Obama announced that he is going to authorise air strikes in Iraq to ‘protect U.S. interests’ and limit the advances of Islamic State militants in the north of the country where they have captured Qaraqosh, Iraq”s biggest Christian town. This together with increasing tensions in Ukraine means that geo-political problems have overtaken fundamentals as the main driver for the markets as U.S. equities could not advance even though there was fairly good jobs data out yesterday over there and the S&P 500 index has now fallen below the important 1900 level in futures trading earlier this morning.  The Dow Jones 30 has also broken through a significant support level at 16340 which goes back to April and stands at 16280 at the moment as I am writing this.  To add to political woes, Hamas broke the ceasefire a few hours in Israel/Gaza so traders will be watching developments over there as well – it’s probably not a good idea to be holding any positions over the weekend !  As you would expect, with all these concerns centred around the Middle East, there are worries over oil supplies, the WTI Crude price rose 74 cents on the day, ending at $97.62.

Over here in Europe, the ECB President, Mario Draghi hinted at continued support for the Euro during this period of economic instability – he is clearly differing from the Fed’s stance of reducing money printing by the end of the year – and this news helped the Euro fall further against the U.S. Dollar, the value is getting very close the low of 1.3300 of November 2013 which may act as a support this time around.

Market Close Thursday 7th Aug. 2014:  Dow Jones 30  -75.07 @ 16,368.27  S&P 500  -10.67 @ 1,909.57  FTSE 100  -38.79 @ 6,597.37  DAX 30  -91.07 @ 9,038.97  CAC 40  -57.31 @ 4,149.83

10:45am  ~  It’s been a quiet morning on my charts so far although the Germa Dax 30 looks as though it maybe reversing so I’ll wait for a UTB confirmation.

11:30am  ~  The Dax price has retraced downwards and looks now as though it is setting up a UTB pattern so I maybe in a ‘long’ position in a minute.

11:40am  ~  I am now in a ‘long’ position on the Dax 30 index with a 47 pip stop loss.

14:05pm  ~  We are off out for lunch now so I closed off my Dax position a few minutes ago – it has ended with a +81 pip profit.

23:20pm  ~  No trading for me this evening, we’ve been out and only just returned home.

Daily Target  +20 pips

Pips Achieved  +81 pips