It ended up being an inactive trading day for me as I was called away for a pre-Christmas lunch with a few friends, after which we headed off to Covent Garden to watch “The Force Awakens” in 3D at the Odean iMax cinema. Awesome movie BTW, highly recommended!

As for the markets, the FTSE managed to recover strongly after a slight dip this morning and was back to the top of it’s daily range by the close; it proceeded  to break through the 6100 level after market hours and is currently trading at 6125.

My thoughts going into this morning’s session were as follows:

• On the daily charts, the FTSE had clearly broken out of the triangle pattern to the downside, then pulled back up to retest the bottom of that triangle before declining again yesterday.
• On the hourly chart, the FTSE broke out of the downward channel to the upside, only to head back down to retest it, bouncing up off the upper trendline.
• Overnight the FTSE had recovered from yesterdays lows, and I expect the FTSE to be range bound for most of the day. The plan of action was to short any pullbacks to key levels.

Took a short at 6085 as price pushed up to re-test the intraday support and resistance level at 6088, which was closed out for a healthy profit.

Following this morning’s bullish jump up, the FTSE 100 traded within a tight range for several hours until it eventually gave up the day’s gains as fast as it could, dropping rapidly back down at 3:30pm onwards. I only managed to get in one other trade shorting at 6010 off an intra-day resistance level and closing out for a handful as the market pulled back up from the 6100 level and looked to be heading back up to the top of the range.

Overnight the market had been pretty flat and only proceeded to turn up during the pre-market session. Taken two trades this morning the first being a support / resistance play at the 6066 level with further confluence as price had also extended past the upper trendline on a downward sloping channel and just pulled back into it that channel – unfortunately it was stopped out 10 minutes later for 20 points. The second trade was a MACD divergence trade as price spiked up beyond the 6100 level, which I closed out for 15 points.