07:20am   No trading for me today as I’m helping a friend with his car restoration later this morning – but first a cycle ride for an hour.

Market Update:

Last night’s U.S. Federal reserve announcement on interest rates came out largely as expected – they kept them on hold at 0.25% again although equity markets did not take the news calmly with up and down movements of over 300 pips on the S&P 500 for a couple of hours after the announcement. The index eventually settled down and ended the day around 50 pips down on the day so the overall trend is still mainly bearish – and the smaller Dow Jones 30 index also ended down although slightly more (65 points)  Markets should be able to forget about U.S. interest rates for a while now and get down to trading on other fundamentals as there is no Fed meeting in October so many traders are now looking at the end of the year possibly although any increase will depend largely on how China weathers it’s economic problems over the next 3 months.

Crude oil markets had a largely down day yesterday after large rises on Wednesday, profit takers kept prices below the 50 moving average on the daily chart as U.S. WTI Crude ended the day 40 cents down at $46:85 and UK Brent Crude fell a similiar amount with both charts down further after the overnight Asian session.