09:25am CET (08:25 UK time)  ~  No trading for me today we still have friends over from the UK.

European and U.S. equities look set to have a fairly positive start to this week as traders optimism is spreading across dealing floors on the expectation that the European Central Bank will announce their money-printing exercise (Sovereign Bond Buying) on Thursday and that will give much needed support to EU equities as the worries of Eurozone deflation has been hanging around now for the past few months. U.S. stocks seemed to have turned a corner briefly and last weeks losses are being negated by Friday’s move upwards.

A brief rally in energy stocks on Friday on the back of rising Crude Oil values may not last though, there is still weak demand due to global economy slowdown and OPEC members have resolutely refused to cut production so it is down to producers in the rest of the world to try and stabilise prices but the Saudis and their trading partners in OPEC have been allowed to become too powerful over the years so they really call the shots at the moment so the guess is there will be further falls once last weeks bullish traders take their profits. WTI Crude rose just over $2 by Friday’s close, to end at $48.97 and Brent Crude had similiar moves upwards although there is a small resistance level at $50.60 so watch that point today.

Gold has benefited from the proposed ECB move this coming Thursday and it rose over £12 on Friday and is now sitting at the $1280 resistance level and if it is going to reverse this will be the time so watch out for short opportunities on the higher chart timeframes.

Market Close Friday 16th January 2015:   Dow Jones 30  +190.86 @ 17,511.57  S&P 500  +26.75 @ 2,019.42  NASDAQ  +52.49 @ 4,142.14  FTSE 100  +51.49 @ 6,550.27  UK AIM  -1.35 @ 696.11  DAX 30  +135.16 @ 10,167.77  CAC 40  +56.42 @ 4,379.62  IBEX  +56.40 @ 10,038.90   Nikkei 225 (Today)  +150.13 @ 17,014.29  Hang Seng (currently)  -423.79 @ 23,679.73