09:40am CET (8:40 UK)  ~  A late start for me today after getting back home at 4am this morning and no trading for me today as I have to be back in the UK for a few days, so I am off to Palma airport in a couple of hours.

You cannot have failed to notice that the markets have been in free-fall this week but I can sense that the worse maybe over for the time being as it has the feeling of a ‘correction’ – the S&P 500 has fallen from its high of 2,022.70 on the 19th of September to the low on Wednesday at 1819.10, this is a drop of almost dead on 10% so we should see the bargain hunters appearing – and this will give us a true perspective on just how market participants see the current world economy at the moment.  Many traders and larger investors have a feeling that the market is overvalued and this price reversal in the U.S. has been on the cards for a while and because of this, the correction has been larger than normal, but it does give everyone a chance to regroup and sort out their holdings so when the majority of market players perceive that the correction has been large enough (10% is perceived to be a ‘normal’ big correction) they will go back into the market and start buying again – what we call ‘bargain-hunters’

The Fed’s Bond buyer programme was supposed to end at the end of this month but Federal Reserve member James Bullard has come and said that it should be delayed to halt a fall in inflation and this comment together with fairly optimistic U.S. data will help the markets recover slightly.  The late recovery of the stock market yesterday also helped the WTI Crude price which recovered from the extended bearish trend slightly and ended $2 up at just over $83.07 and as expected the rise in the value of Gold was halted temporarily during yesterday’s session as traders moved their money over to equities – it ended the day almost $3 in the red at $1239. Interestingly Gold hit a long term support/resistance level yesterday at $1245 so there maybe more falls in the short term.

Market Close Thursday 16th Oct. 2014:   Dow Jones 30  -24.50 @ 16,117.24  S&P 500  +0.27 @ 1,862.76  NASDAQ  -20.69 @ 3,765.28  FTSE 100  -15.73 @ 6,195.91  DAX 30  +10.95 @ 8,582.90  CAC 40  -21.10 @ 3,918.62  IBEX  -168.80 @ 9,669.70