Interesting times

Monday was a bit of a non event as far as trading went - neither the US nor the UK were open for trading so global markets were battling for direction of any kind.

However I thought that maybe the Memorial Day holidays in the US may provide us with a short-term trading opportunity. The Americans are quite big on these big patriotic holidays and on more than one occasion I've seen these "Patriot Rallys" where US markets go up seemingly because of national sentiment.

Did a bit of a Google search on the subject - specifically relating to Memorial Day - and I came up with this link which made for good reading (particularly if you're a stats or quants guy).

Used Monday to position myself with a couple of short term long trading positions on the Dow, S&P, Oil, JSE All Share Index, Naspers, AngloGold and Sasol. Yeah yeah its a bog-roll long list of pozzies but I'm comfortable with the spread.

I wanted MTN as well yesterday morning but the merger talk with Bharti moved the price too early and I couldn't get the entry I wanted.

The Oil trade hasn't yet gone totally to plan and is bouncing around just above my stop-loss but there seems to be some support at above US$59.50 which is keeping me in the game.

I don't believe this will be a particularly sustainable rally but I guess we try and take the opportunities when they look like they are there and if there are short-term profits available then we take it off the table.