08:00am UK time ~ Back in a very frosty Suffolk this morning and I have a couple of meetings here during the day but I will be watching some charts now and then when I get a chance.

The markets have been encouraged by the interest rate drop announcement by the People’s Bank of China together ECB President Mario Draghi’s reiteration that he is getting closer to an outright sovereign bond purchasing programme to help stave off deflation. At the end of last week most indices ended ahead with the year-end rally that I talked of a few weeks ago still intact even though it is mainly caused by central bank intervention. Having said that, the Dow Jones and S&P indices were encouraged by positive economic data together with better-than-expected corporate earnings which time and time again is coming in above expectations – this is keeping the U.S. markets in a bullish mood and creating a two-speed world economy.  Although European markets are now optimistic after Draghi’s comments, it is inevitable that the Euro is going to suffer from any money-printing exercise, and it has now revisited the two year low against the U.S. Dollar that we last saw in August 2012.

There is still plenty of speculation as to how far the value of crude oil is going to drop but there was a brief respite in the fall of U.S. WTI Crude on Friday after the PBoC rate reduction announcement boosted prices temporarily as China is the world’s biggest consumer of crude products.  The main driver of crude values this week is going to be OPEC’s meeting on Thursday so traders can see what production levels are going to be in the new year. Gold also got a boost from the Chinese news as a cut of bank rate anywhere tends to drive investors back into safe haven assets and my daily Gold chart does show a possibility of further rises to the $1208 resistance level.

Market Close Friday 21st November 2014:   Dow Jones 30  +91.06 @ 17,810.06  S&P 500  +10.75 @ 2,063.50  NASDAQ  +9.23 @ 4,251.32  FTSE 100  +71.86 @ 6,750.76  UK AIM  +6.27 @ 723.85  DAX 30  +248.58 @ 9,732.55  CAC 40  +113.02 @ 4,347.23  IBEX +311.60 @ 10,520.80   Nikkei 225 (Today)  +56.65 @ 17,357.51  Hang Seng (currently)  +449.26  @ 23,886.38

11:10am  ~  Not much happening on my charts in the last hour while I’ve been glancing at them – so I am off for a cycle ride along the beach path and then lunch at the Lord Nelson.

17:00pm  ~ Been busy this afternoon with meetings with architects so not had the opportunity to see any charts but I’m going to sit down now and watch the S&P 500 chart to see if there are any “Trade With A Day Job” set-ups in the next few hours.

18:05pm  ~  There is very low volume on the S&P tonight making trading tricky — so I’m curtailing my trading activities and walking upto the Lord Nelson for a while…