07:45am (GMT)  ~  I have a few hours here in the study before I am off to France until Sunday, so I’ll shall be catching up on some emailing plus two Skype calls as well.

The markets yesterday staged a comeback after two days of extreme geopolitical turmoil and warmongering, which saw traders and investors sell risk assets only to buy back those same assets the next day, which means we are roughly where we were at Fridays close. Rather than a slow ride to the end of the week, now have more chart gyrations as there is now three days of economic news and central bank meetings culminating in the U.S. employment figures.  The Dow Jones rose 227 points to 16390.5 by the close of yesterday’s session, more than previous day’s slump and the wider S&P500 put on 28 points to just over 1873.

The WTI crude prices gave back most of Monday’s gains, posting a fall of $1.44 to $103.37 on the back of speculation that a conflict between Russia and Ukraine will do little to disrupt oil supplies, that’s if it happens at all.  Gold prices eased back by $16.00 to reach $1334.5 with the attention now the ECB and Bank of England interest rate meetings and nonfarm payrolls report in the US.

10:05am  ~   I’ off shortly so I will update this diary next on Monday/Tuesday.  My new trading manual on ‘Long-Term Trading’ is out next week so email me for more details.