08:15am  I had envisaged being in front of my screens yesterday but a last minute invitation meant I was out all day but today’s plan is to be at home all day so any trades I find will be detailed below in my Trading Diary.

Market Update:

U.S. equity markets ended bullishly once again last night on optimism over Trump’s tax reforms and it’s effect on corporate earnings in 2018.  The Dow Jones 30 index rose 140 points to finish at 24,792:20, it’s 70th record close of this year and this year is the first time in history that the index has risen over 5000 points in one year and the wider S&P-500 was equally as positive as it also rose by just over 0.50%.  This bullish sentiment carried on through the overnight Asian trading session where most indices closed up although the Japanese Nikkei-225 did finish slightly down by 0.15% with tech stocks dragging the index down even though car manufacturers surged – Mitsubishi were up by +2.13%.

Oil markets traded mostly sideways during Monday’s session with the Brent Crude Oil’s 20-day moving average providing good support with the Forties Pipeline outage also helping prop the price up at the moment. The UK benchmark closed last night at $63:38 up 15 cents and is trading higher this morning at $63:60 although price action on the weekly chart is still suggesting a move down by the end of December.

Gold will usually travel in the opposite direction to the equity markets but it is currently bucking this trend and has risen consistently since the beginning of last week when it reversed at the $1236 level and is now approaching its 200-day moving average at $1268 (currently $1264:30)  Current price action is suggesting a bearish reversal soon as shown in the chart I sent out to subscribers early this morning.

Trading Diary:

10:20am    Nothing much occurring on my collection of favourite charts so I am off for a cycle ride with some neighbours.

12:10pm   Volumes on the charts that I watch are down slightly and so far I have nothing to report in the way of trading opportunities – off for an early lunch now.

15:40pm   Been a quiet afternoon on my charts but I have just taken a ‘short’ trade on my DAX-30 30-min chart, it’s a Master-The-Trend Strategy-B set-up with an 18 pip stop loss.

17:30pm   Out of my DAX-30 position, the price has come down very well but seems to have stalled around the 13,200 level for the last hour so I closed the trade with a reasonable +65 pip profit.