08:35am  ~  Still in the UK unexpectedly with a few things to sort out so no trading for me today.

So good news trumped bad for once on Friday with the Ebola epidemic, European slowdown and Chinese economy woes beaten by optimistic consumer confidence numbers in the U.S. together with a good start to the corporate earnings season gave the Dow Jones and S&P 500 indices a boost of over 1% apiece by the close of play on the last day of the trading week. On the back of this rebound in U.S. markets, Asian indices were in a bullish mood last night as the east started their trading week with Japan’s Nikkei 225 index shot up by 3.6% which was its biggest daily rise since before the summer and the Chinese Hang Seng was slightly behind with a jump of +0.5%. There was not such good news here in Europe though with confirmation that inflation dropped 0.3% giving extra weight to fears of deflation in the EU and this was the main cause of the EUR/USD currency pair dropping nearly 50 pips at the close of last week, down to 1.2760 and it is still falling this morning as it is currently sitting at 1.2749 as I write this.

Crude oil is still under pressure which has prompted the larger two OPEC nations of Saudia Arabia and Kuwait to contemplate a new scheme of cutting production after the mootedprice war did not really do them much good. WTI Crude ended virtually unchanged on Friday with a nice reversal candle on the daily chart so any move down below $82.40 in the next few days will probably signal more falls – it is currently sitting at $83.27.

Market Close Friday 17th Oct. 2014:   Dow Jones 30  +263.17 @ 16,380.41  S&P 500  +24.00 @ 1,886.76  NASDAQ  +50.09 @ 3,815.47  FTSE 100  +114.38 @ 6,310.29  DAX 30  +267.37 @ 8,850.27  CAC 40  +114.56 @ 4,033.18  IBEX  +287.10 @ 9,656.80