08:20am    Back from my short holiday and my plan today is to spend most of the day here at my desk catching up on emails and also do some chart watching from time to time. Any trades I take will be detailed below in my Trading Diary.

Market Update:

Markets were affected yesterday by the developing Turkish economic crisis which seems to have been kickstarted by the U.S. increasing tariffs on their steel and aluminium exports and Monday’s U.S. trading session ended down by around 0.50% with the Dow Jones 30 index closing at 25,187.70 (-125.44 points) which was its fourth negative day in a row but we can see some recovery this morning in European indices.  The overnight Asian session ended mixed with the Japanese Nikkei-225 index bouncing back from earlier losses as traders shrugged off the potential global reaction of a plummeting Turkish Lira – it has fallen nearly 30% in August as traders worry about Turkish President Erdogan’s reluctance to raise interest rates even though the country is experiencing rampant inflation and a weakening economy.

Oil markets have been given a small boost after Saudi Arabia (through OPEC)has announced that they are cutting production from next month in an effort to avert a potential oversupply situation.  Brent Crude closed flat at $71.15 last night after a fairly volatile session that saw the price bounce off a minor support area around $71.25 but it has risen in the last few hours to $73.28.  Although equity markets have been falling this week, the Gold price has not really benefited and it ended down last night at $1194.43, a drop of over $18 on the day. We are seeing a small bullish move this morning as bargain hunters abound so watch for a rise towards the $1200 level.

Trading Diary:

10:45am   I have just taken a ‘short’ position on my 15-min FTSE-100 chart.  It’s a Master-The-Trend Strategy-B pattern and my stop loss is a heady 13 pips.

12:20pm    Still in my FTSE position and I have brought my stop loss upto break even as it’s doing ok  and I’m going to be out for lunch for the next hour or so.

13:30pm    Back home now and my FTSE position is at +23 pips so I have closed it off as I’m unexpectedly going off to London shortly for a birthday celebration.  Also switching off my charts now but back early tomorrow morning.