08:25am   Quiet day planned at home catching up on emails and putting the final touches to my new eBook on trading with the 200 Moving-Average which is out next week.  I will also be watching my charts for trade set-ups from time to time and any positions I take will be detailed below in my Trading Diary.

Market Update:

Yesterday’s U.S. trading session closed in negative territory after a good run on Tuesday prompted traders to take some profits off the table plus President Trump’s comments regarding a government shut-down over his Mexican Wall project weighed on sentiment – the S&P index of the leading 500 companies closed at 2444.04, down by 8.47 points with the narrower Dow Jones 30 closing down by a similiar percentage.

The overnight Asian session bucked Wednesday’s trend and finished mostly up as traders shrugged off the negative sentiment in the U.S but this morning’s European trading session has opened mixed, there was some initial buying but this has not lasted and sellers are entering the market although volumes are still low due to August holidays. Traders are also watching for significant news out of tomorrow’s Jackson Hole meeting of global central bankers where they should give clues regarding future monetary policy.

Oil prices rose well yesterday and are holding steady this morning on falling U.S. inventories plus potential disruption in output due to an impending tropical storm coming in across the Gulf of Mexico. WTI Crude rose 73 cents on Wednesday to close at $48:35 and is broadly the same at the moment.  Gold is still coming off the $1295 high as geo-political worries subside, although it had a good session yesterday as equities slipped slightly – it rose $5.50 to close at $1290.55 last night but is down this morning at $1287.20.

Trading Diary:

09:40am   I have opened a ‘long’ position on my S&P-500 chart, it’s a Master-The-Trend Strategy-B pattern with a larger than normal stop loss for a 15-min chart of 31 pips.  This is also a ‘short’ trade which has just triggered on my GOLD chart but the S&P-500 and GOLD charts are inversely correlated to a certain extent so there is little point in doubling my risk because if my S&P trade fails there is a good chance that the GOLD one will as well.

Subscribers to my daily Trading Guidance service will note that there is a possibility of the S&P-500 rising today so this gives extra weight to my decision.

10:15am    All quiet on the rest of my charts and the S&P position still doing ok so off for a cycle ride – back in a few hours.

13:55pm   I have just closed off my S&P-500 position at+59 pips.  Happy with the score so far today so switching off my charts now.