07:55am CET (6:55 UK time)  ~  Nothing much of note for my day so far so I shall be here in the study this morning doing some emails and chart watching every half hour or so. A neighbour has suggested a bike ride to Formentor at 9 o’clock so I’ll be way for a couple of hours but I’ll report back if I have any trades.

The U.S. markets ended well last week with the Dow Jones Industrial Average hitting another all time high and the S&P500 bouncing off the near-term resistance at 2022, so the year-end rally seems well and truly established now. European markets are failing to be as enthusiastic with trader sentiment still subdued as they wait for a sign from the European Central Bank that monetary stimulus is forthcoming to help their ailing economies – and disappointing Chinese new orders at home and abroad has kept Asian markets at bay overnight. There are plenty of large data releases and Central Bank meeting reports coming up this week so expect some sharp moves in the markets over the next few days together with the aftermath of Japanese stimulus programme getting underway.

Worldwide oil demand is still slowing but middle-eastern OPEC members are still resisting calls to reduce production to stave off a drop in crude values but the price of U.S. WTI Crude fell again on Friday to just over $80 and it hit the recent support level at $79:50 during intra-day trading.  The success of fracking in the U.S. is having a negative impact of crude values which is not going to go away for the foreseeable future – good news for consumers and businesses alike so the UK government should sit up and pay attention.  Gold had another bearish week with its value now well below the $1180 support, it finished on Friday at $1173, down over $26 on the day and now at a record level not seen since the middle of 2012 – advancing equity markets towards the end of the year are not going to help the price get back up over $1200 in the near term, watch for a bounce off $1180 for bearish trade opportunities.

Market Close Friday 31st October 2014:   Dow Jones 30  +195.10 @ 17,390.52  S&P 500  +23.40 @ 2,018.05  NASDAQ  +57.57 @ 4,158.21  FTSE 100  +82.92 @ 6,546.47  UK AIM 0.00 @ 720.17  DAX 30  +212.03 @ 9,326.87  CAC 40  +91.86 @ 4,233.09  IBEX  +214.10 @ 10,477.80  Nikkei 225 (Today)  Market Closed  Hang Seng (Today)  -96.399  @ 23,901.67

11:25am (10:25 UK time) ~ I’ve had an unusually large number of emails come in over the weekend so I have been going through them this morning and missed the earlier bike ride with neighbour Jochen but I am going out now on my own for an hour or so. No trades to report so far.

22:25pm CET  ~  Just had a look at this diary and realised it has not been updating throughout the day as I have been writing this which may have something to do with the fact we are migrating the Markets Mastered website over to new servers.  I will sort it out tomorrow once Max has completed all the technical work.

For info I had one UTB trade earlier this afternoon (+71 pips) and nothing this evening as we’ve been out.