07:10am   Back from Barcelona very late last night so it’s back to normal this morning for a week before I am then off on my annual 3-week Cornwall holiday. Any trades I have today will be detailed in this diary.

Market Update:

As you will have seen if you have your charts open already, the fall-out from the ‘Greek’ situation started last night as the markets opened in Asian for the new week. The German DAX 30 and London FTSE 100 opened sharply down a few minutes ago and the U.S. futures show similiar declines for the S&P 500 and Dow Jones 30. The EU finance ministers meeting on Saturday failed to reach any concrete solution which was no big surprise as Greek Prime minister Alexis Tsipras had already announced he was going to hold a referendum on the situation almost a week after the deadline his lenders have given him to pay back a large tranche of the debt he owes. At least he is sticking to his election manifesto and bargaining hard for anti-austerity measures but the result seems to be taking Greece into a financial crisis to rival the global recession of 2008/09. We already know that Greek banks are now going to stay closed until 7th July, 2 days after the referendum and there is also a daily cash withdrawal limit of €60 from ATM’s countrywide and to add to the woe, the ECB had frozen their Emergency Liquidity Assistance to just over €88 billion which is going to put a strain on Greek banks. As a further development, I’ve just heard on Bloomberg radio that rumours have now been confirmed and the Greek Stock market will be closed today.

Crude Oil and Gold have also been affected, WTI Crude has dropped on fears of a slowing in demand triggered by the thought of another global slowdown and Gold has risen on safe-haven demand for the same reason, it would seem that Alexis Tsipras is controlling the markets at the moment…

Trading Diary:

08:15am   The markets are still sorting themselves out after the large drops that occurred as the Asian markets opened late last night, so I am off out for a cycle ride now as there are no obvious trading opportunities at the moment.

16:05pm   It’s been a volatile day on the markets, so not much to see on my charts on the few times I have glanced at them —  but I have just got into a ‘long’ position on my Gold chart.  It’s a UTB pattern and my stop loss is 25 pips.

17:20pm    Still in the Gold trade but volume has dropped and the bullish sentiment has also dropped off quite a bit – still in profit though so I will move my stop loss upto break-even while I pop down to the beach for a short while and see where it is when I get back.

18:40pm   Got back 5mins ago and my trade was at +34 pips so I’ve closed it off – happy with that.  No more trading today, out in an hour for the evening.