07:50am   No plans for today apart from 3 Skype calls in the next hour with new traders and catching up on emails, so any trades I have through the day will be detailed below.

Market Update:

The overnight Asian market’s bearish sentiment has spilled over to the start of European trading this morning – equity markets in Japan, China and Australia all ended in the red with the Nikkei 225 index coming in worst with a near 1% drop (-162 points) where Dollar weakness and Yen strength has put exporter’s shares under pressure – the USD/JPY has been falling now fairly regularly for the last year or so from a high of 124.45 to the current level of 106.38 and looks to be heading back towards the strong support at 105.50 quite soon.

Markets in the U.S. also had a bullish session yesterday with the main S&P 500 index pushing to new 2016 levels again, it touched 2120 at one stage which it had not visited since July last year although this morning’s futures market is showing a fall to 2110 currently which is mainly due to the weak European open.

Gold is once again surging ahead with a delayed U.S. interest rate rise the main reason, it hit $1264.30 at one stage yesterday as the U.S. markets began trading but there does seem to be some profit taking at the moment and it is currently sitting just above $1260.  Another rising commodity yesterday was Crude Oil after the U.S. stock numbers showed a fall in inventories of 3.23 million barrels down to 532.5 million barrels, WTI Crude touched $51:59 late yesterday but has fallen back slightly during the Asian session and is currently at $51:13.

Trading Diary:

09:00am    Just completed all my Skype calls for the morning and checked my collection of favourite charts but no trading opportunities are developing so I am off for a cycle ride for an hour or so.

10:15am    Just got back and surveying my charts over the last few minutes has thrown up a ‘short’ trade on my U.S. WTI Crude chart, so I am now in a trade on the 15min chart with a 19 pip stop loss.  As is quite normal, there is a similiar trade on the Brent Crude chart but the price has not gone low enough to trigger the trade yet.

13:05pm     Planning a lunch in Walberswick with some friends so I’ve closed off my WTI trade as the profit is more than acceptable (+42 pips)  There is also a few interesting levels on the hourly chart that makes me believe there could be a break in the bearish momentum for a while and if you’d like to see that 1hr chart just email me.  That’s me done for the day in front of my charts.