08:55am  ~  Nice relaxed start to the day for me this morning after a very late night here with a few friends.

There is another sea of red figures below showing that U.S. and European equities had another bearish session yesterday although trading overnight Asia has been quite optimistic with some bargain hunters keeping a lid on recent falls.  Troubles in Greece is still at the forefront of traders thoughts with the far-left Syriza party increasing their domination in the polls ahead of the election in a few weeks, if they are victorious the austerity measures that has been forced on Greece by the European Central Bank over the past year will probably be cast aside – and this may trigger the country leaving the Eurozone all together. Although Germany has already stated that the EU can cope with this departure, there are worries that other troubled countries in the zone may also make moves to leave as well, which could herald the break up of the entire economic area.

The other dominating news yesterday was the plunging price of crude oil – the U.S. benchmark West Texas Intermediate dropped nearly $2 to end the day at almost dead-on $48 and after the overnight Asian session it is sitting even further down at $47, so it may seem as though the previous $50 support may become resistance for the rest of the week. The drop in OPEC wholesale prices to Europe and the U.S. has spurred this latest price fall together with the determination of the Saudis to break the domination of U.S. fracking which has caused a drop in crude  exports from OPEC countries across the Atlantic.

With turmoil and bearish sentiment in the equity market, there is little surprise that investors are moving across to Gold and this safe haven commodity moved nearly $17 higher during yesterday’s session to finish at $1218.9 and currently it is sitting slightly down at $1215.

Market Close Tuesday 6th January 2015:   Dow Jones 30  -130.01 @ 17,371.64  S&P 500  -17.97 @ 2,002.61  NASDAQ  -50.31 @ 4,110.83  FTSE 100  -50.65 @ 6,366.51  UK AIM  -4.92 @ 700.07  DAX 30  -3.50 @ 9,469.66  CAC 40  -27.86 @ 4,083.50  IBEX  -122.20 @ 9,871.10   Nikkei 225 (Today)  +2.14 @ 16,885.33  Hang Seng (currently)  +208.26 @ 23,693.67

09:50am ~ Just finished two Skype calls and had a cursory glance at my collection of charts and there’s nothing developing at the moment so I am off to get one of my cars serviced in Colchester.

21:45pm ~ No trading to report as I ended up spending the day out shopping.