08:55am  ~  Late start for me just because it’s Monday morning and I’ve nothing much planned for the day so far. I shall spend a few hours here in the study doing emails and a bit of chart watching with a cycle ride out at some stage before lunchtime.

Bad news everywhere this morning – Traders seem to be mainly blaming the fall in Crude Oil values for the worldwide equities decline although if you look at a few charts you can see that the year-end rally that kicked off around the middle of October was due for a correction soon anyway so a lot of traders have been short for a while.  Arguably one of the most important indexes, the top 500 companies in the world’s biggest economy that make up the S&P500 has been faltering around the 2075 level since the end of November and last week started a bearish trend that’s not going to be helped by the overnight hostage situation in Sydney. Last week the other main U.S. index – the Dow Jones Industrial Average suffered it’s biggest weekly loss since 2011 it lost over 300 points alone on Friday and this morning the futures price is hovering above the important support/resistance point at 17,300.

Crude Oil has now dropped well below the important $60 with traders trying to guess where the support may establish itself during the coming week – the WTI Crude price is currently trading at $58.37, slightly up on the low overnight of $56.71 and there does not appear to be anything that’s going to prop the value up – low worldwide demand that shows no sign of reversing into 2015 together with plentiful supplies, OPEC refusing to cut their production and now the International Energy Agency has once again reduced its global demand forecast – this is the fourth time in the last 5 months.

Over here in Europe the yield on Greek 10-year bonds risen dramatically around 200 base points over last week – this is the largest leap since the Eurozone sovereign-debt crisis in earlier 2012. This developing problem did not impact of the Euro last week but overnight trading in Asia has seen a small drop in the EUR/USD, it’s now trading at 1.2437 down from last week’s high of 1.2494.

Gold should benefit from these troubled times but so far this morning there is still a bearish tilt to the daily chart, there was a price reversal last Wednesday from a high of $1238.20 and is currently trading at $1214.00 with a support level at the important $1200 point.

Market Close Friday 12th December 2014:   Dow Jones 30  -315.51 @ 17,280.83  S&P 500  -33.00 @ 2,002.33  NASDAQ  -47.19 @ 4,199.28  FTSE 100  -161.07 @ 6,300.63  UK AIM  -4.93 @ 693.12  DAX 30  +267.80 @ 9,594.73  CAC 40  -116.93 @ 4,108.93  IBEX  -286.80 @ 10,145.00   Nikkei 225 (Today)  +272.18 @ 17,099.40  Hang Seng (currently)  -228.59 @ 23,020.61

10:05am ~ Just been glancing quickly through my favourite charts and there looks like a UTB ‘short’ trade setting up on my U.S. Crude Oil chart (WTI)

10:30am  ~  I am now in the UTB trade – my stop loss is 29 pips.

11:15am  ~  Still in trade – currently at +9 pips.

12:45pm  ~  Happy with the current position of my trade – so I am now out of the market with a +64 pip profit.

12:55pm  ~  Off for a quick cycle ride before more catching up on emails this afternoon.

14:30pm  ~  Back home now and I can see a UTB pattern on my Gold chart – if the price goes up over 1210.90 I shall get into a ‘long’ position.

14:55pm  ~  I am now in that UTB trade – my stop loss is 34 pips.

16:35pm  ~  I am now out of my Gold position with a profit of +45 pips.

18:40pm  ~  Been looking at my S&P 500 chart one and off for the last hour for “Trade With A Day Job” opportunities but nothing yet – but I am now in a ‘short’ position on Gold with one of the trendFX strategies.

23:35pm  ~  My earlier trendFX trade on my Gold chart ended up at +114 pips.