07:05am   Although I am back home now there’s no trading for me today as 1)  it is Non Farm Payrolls announcement day and  2)  I am off to Norfolk for a quick 2-day visit.

Market Update:

As mentioned above, the main market news today is the U.S. monthly jobs report so markets will be fairly quiet this morning in readiness for the announcement at 13:30pm UK time. There is an expected rise of 201,000 jobs which is higher than August’s figure of 173,000 so an actual number below this may cause equities to fall on the open of the U.S. session although bad news may mean that the Fed delay their expected rate rise in which case there will be a positive reaction in the markets – you can see why I do not worry about trading today !

Overnight the Asian session was mixed with Chinese stocks coming in ahead – both the Shanghai Composite and HangSeng index were up but the Japanese Nikkei 225 ended down on profit taking ahead of the U.S. jobs announcement. Crude oil had a fairly volatile session yesterday mainly due to increased military activity in Syria which will ultimately affect a lot of the oil-producing Middle Eastern region although U.S. WTI Crude is still trading in a fairly narrow range between $43.25 and $47.75.