08:25am  ~  A subdued start for me today after a late night at the Yacht Club and as it’s the first Friday of the month I shall not be trading today – as usual the markets will be quiet this morning ahead of the U.S. employment numbers that are out at lunchtime (UK time) – and there is talk of some clay pigeon shooting at 11am to keep me away from this laptop.

The big news in the markets yesterday was the surprise that the European Central Bank reduced their base lending rate to a record low of 0.05% to try and kickstart the EU economy – together with their version of money printing, the purchasing of private debt to try and stave off deflation.  There was calls for Mario Draghi to finally do something to prop up the Eurozone after months of waffle but this caught traders on the back foot and it obviously had a profound effect on the most heavily trading forex pair, the EUR/USD, it dropped over 230 points in just over 6 hours of trading.  Equities were also affected to the upside –  U.S. companies export to Europe in a big way so the S&P 500 index rose on the rate announcement but did fall back in later trading due mainly to energy producers reacting to falling Crude Oil prices.

With the Euro falling out of favour yesterday, the U.S. Dollar rose in value and this in turn created a march away from Gold in the short term so although there was an initial spike upwards at the start of the U.S. trading session – it then tailed off for the rest of the day and finished $8 lower at $1261. On the daily chart, there does seem to be clear sky all the way down to the $1240 level as it is now well below the $1268 pivot point.

Market Close Thursday 4th Sept. 2014:  Dow Jones 30  -8.70 @ 17,069.58  S&P 500  -3.07 @ 1,995.67  NASDAQ  -4.88 @4,066.13  FTSE 100  +4.39 @ 6,877.97  DAX 30  +97.77 @ 9,724.26  CAC 40  +73.07 @ 4,494.94

Daily Target  +20 pips

Pips Achieved – No Trading Today