08:30am  ~  Another day away from the markets today for me, I shall again be watching the tennis this afternoon but I have some Skype calls with newbie traders this morning plus some emails to reply to as well. For those of you who will be doing some chart watching – the markets will be quite subdued today as we have the U.S. Independence Day holiday taking a lot of volume away, maybe time for a long weekend break away from your screens ?

The big news of yesterday’s trading session was news that 288,000 more jobs were added in the U.S. – way ahead of the estimate at 215K, and this managed to push the Dow Jones Industrial Average above the significant 17,000 level and ended at 17,068 up 92 points.  The wider S&P500 index also pushed up to a record high at 1985 and there does seem to be blue sky ahead on the daily chart – but will there be a climate of profit-taking on Monday once trader get back from their long weekend holiday ?

Indices in Europe did not enjoy such bullish sentiment, the European Central Bank kept their record low rate of  0.15% for the next month and traders took that as a sign that President Draghi still feels that the Eurozone still needs more help to raise growth – the Euro also suffered against the U.S. Dollar as a result. With all the accent on equities yesterday it was inevitable that investors would move away from safe-haven commodities so Gold suffered to the extent that it lost nearly $8 during the session, ending just over $1320 – as I have mentioned previously, there is a significant resistance level around $1331 so we are still seeing a move down from that level during this week after quite a few reversal candles on the daily chart, fundamentals and technicals working in harmony ?

Market Close Thursday July 3rd 2014:   Dow Jones 30  +92.02 @ 17068.26     S&P 500  +10.82 @1985.44     FTSE 100  +49 @ 6865.21