07:25am  ~  It’s been a busy few days down here doing sightseeing at Land’s End and the Scilly Isles so no market update yesterday and no chance for chart watching yet this week.

China – the world’s second largest economy –  has announced favourable GDP numbers which should buoy the markets today after a largely indifferent day yesterday. The Dow Jones 30 just managed to finish in positive territory after an initial, dramatic fall on the open, mainly due to Janet Yellen, the FED’s chairman, hinting that improving employment numbers may well force her to increase interest rates earlier than the market is expecting. As you can imagine, this also sent currency traders into a dollar buying frenzy resulting the the EUR/USD forex pair dropping 50 pips on the day, ending at 1.3569. The other main U.S. index, the S&P500, finished in the red as it failed to recover sufficiently from the same opening session drop that befell the DJ30.  The London FTSE 100 index is expected to have a subdued open after a 0.5% drop yesterday ahead of UK employment numbers at 9:30am GMT, although there is not expected to be much change on last month’s figures of 6.6% – general consensus seems to be a slight improvement to 6.5%.

Gold has suffered for the past few sessions, Monday’s drop in price was caused mainly by a rush into equities and a relaxing over fears of Portugal’s banking problems and yesterday there was the aforementioned move into U.S. dollars leaving the yellow metal over $45 down since Monday morning’s open – it is now below the significant $1300 support level.  WTI Crude Oil values has also taken a tumble this week and are now hovering around the important $100 level after news of high U.S. stocks coupled with a perceived easing of the political tensions in Libya and Iraq caused a drop in price, closing at $100.19 last night.

Market Close Monday 15th July 2014:  Dow Jones 30  +5.26 @ 17,060.68  S&P 500  -3.82   @ 1,973.28  FTSE 100  -35.69 @ 6,710.45  DAX 30 -63.60 @9,719.41