11:15am  ~  Still no time for chart watching as the holiday continues with no rest in sight although thunder storms down here last night has subdued outdoor activities slightly.

Just turned on my charts quickly 5 minutes ago to see what the markets are doing at the moment and I can see that the U.S. indices suffered a bit of a drop yesterday, no doubt on the worries of the Malaysian airliner shot down over Ukraine and news of the Israeli invasion of Gaza  - as you’ve do doubt noticed in the past, markets do not like geo-political turmoil or conflict, but on the upside both the Dow Jones 30 and S&P500 have come to a rest around historical moving average support and rebounded from there this morning, so we may see a resumption of the bullish trend up towards the highs of earlier this week.  Looking at the wider picture however, there does seem to be some marked reluctance for buyers to keep up their momentum when values reach near-term highs, there does seem to be quite a strong resistance level around 1985 on the S&P500 although the Dow Jones index is having better luck after breaking through the 17,00 barrier a month ago. European markets are clearly being held back by worries regarding the Eurozone economy and are well off there recent highs in June and early July.

As you would expect, amid all this global unrest Gold had a good day yesterday – advancing over $20 to reach $1318.9 last night as renewed demand for safe-haven investments rose although I can see there has been some profit-taking this morning.