David Fuller's view Starting with the latter positions, I had placed a breakeven stop to protect my US T-Bond short last Thursday, as I was going to be away on Friday. In the event this was triggered on 11th June, buying back the short at 123.70 against the sale at 123.75 on 9th June, including spread-bet dealing costs of 0.04 each way. T-Bonds and other long-dated government futures still look like a short trade to me.

This afternoon, on seeing the previously overextended USD weaken further and with other metals firm, I doubled my gold futures long, paying $1220.9 for another August position, including spread-bet dealing costs of $0.6. A little profit taking in bullion is not surprising as gold had been so strong previously and so-called risk assets such as stocks and most other commodities are firming once again. However the USD price of gold could easily firm as the greenback retraces some of its earlier gains.

This morning, the cash balance of approximately 10% in a family ISA account was invested to top up two existing positions: the iShares FTSE Xinhua China tracker (FXC LN) (weekly & daily) and the Aberdeen New Dawn Investment Trust (ABD LN) (weekly & daily), which currently sells at a 10% discount to NAV. I prefer to buy following setbacks and would not be surprised to see China's relative performance improve now that the government appears to have checked the previously overheating property market without derailing the PRC's world-leading growth juggernaut. Aberdeen's Hugh Young continues to impress me. When I looked at ABD's top-10 holding a couple of months ago, the gold share Newcrest mining headed the list. Today, it is Aberdeen's own India fund. Consequently I have even more exposure to India, mainly via the JP Morgan India Fund (JII LN) (weekly & daily), a small position in Vedanta which is India's biggest miner, and now ABD which is in all my personal accounts.