07:25am   Early start for me today, I am away now until after the weekend for my Mother’s funeral.

Market Update:

With the Chinese markets closed now until Monday, traders can concentrate on the raft of economic news and numbers out here in Europe and over in the U.S. to help them decide on market direction. Here in Europe there is August’s Services PMI numbers for Spain, Italy, France and Germany and all are expected to have readings of over 50 and improving. There is also the European Central Bank’s monthly interest rate announcement and although the record low 0.05% level is largely expected to stay, more interest will be focused on the press conference shortly afterwards as traders are keen to see if the ECB’s Quantative Easing (money-printing) Programme is to be enlarged.

In the U.S. yesterday both the Dow Jones 30 and S&P 500 indices ended 1.8% up on the back of the FOMC’s Beige Book analysis which takes economic evidence from the twelve U.S. Federal reserve Banks regarding their thoughts on local economic activity and conditions in their local area and this data is then used by the Fed to set future interest rates. Last night’s announcement was mixed with some weakness in manufacturing and traders took this news as a suggestion that a September interest rate rise was off the table so a period of buying ensued late in yestrday’s session.

Wednesday sees the U.S. Crude Oil stock situation and yesterday there was a gain of 4.7 million barrels over the previous week and this news initially caused WTI Crude to fall over $2:30 before bargain hunters stepped in as the price hit the minor support at $43:50. Many market observers now see the price staying in a narrow channel between $40 and $50 for the rest of the year.