09:05am   Back to relative normality today as I am planning a quiet day at home catching up on emails and Skype calls plus some chart watching from time to time. Any trades I take will be detailed below in my Trading Diary.

Market Update:

U.S. markets were subject to a fierce pullback yesterday as concerns over an escalating trade war with China reared up once again. The Dow Jones index fell 287.26 points by the close last night (-1.15%) and the wider S&P-500 suffered slightly less at -0.40%.  Stocks that export to Asia were hardest hit but I do wonder whether these threats from Trump’s administration over trade tariffs against China are just negotiating tactics which we’ve seen before when he was conversing with North Korea regarding the recent summit for nuclear disarmament. Will traders and investors see through these games or will the markets still keep reacting to every tweet the President releases ? Only time will tell.

The overnight Asian trading session was broadly positive after early losses caused by the bearish U.S. markets. Many of the indices gained over 1% during the night including the Nikkei-225, ASX-200 and South Korean Kospi Index but Chinese markets only just finished in the black after earlier losses.  The Gold market continues to suffer and seems to be heading to the most recent low at $1235 which was reached at the end of 2017. The price fell $3.91 during Wednesday’s session to close at $1274.30 and is further down at $1272.20 at the moment.

Oil markets are on alert today as we have the weekly U.S. Crude Oil Inventories report due out in a few hours and the Brent Crude price is hovering around the historical support/resistance line around $75.00 once again this morning after a fairly volatile few sessions.  Price is being supported by a likely announcement that there’s been a fall in Crude Inventories and also a loss of storage capacity in Libya – it’s going to be an interesting day for oil traders…

Trading Diary:

10:40am   I have just taken a ‘long’ position on my Brent Crude 30-min chart. It’s a Master-The-Trend Strategy-A set-up with  24 pip stop loss.

11:55am  Just got back home after a cycle ride and seen my Brent position has been stopped out at -24 pips.

12:05pm   I am now in a ‘short’ FTSE-100 position using the UTB pattern and 15 minute timeframe.  My stop loss this time is 10 pips.

12:40pm    Now out of the FTSE-100 position ahead of the U.S. trading session open in just under an hour. My score on this trade was +31 pips.

12:55pm   I’ve been invited out for a game of golf this afternoon so no more screen watching today, back here as usual early tomorrow morning.  Total score for the day +7 pips.