08:10am    No trading for me today as it’s Non Farm Payrolls in the U.S. and I traditionally stay away from the markets as they tend to be quiet this morning in the run-up to the announcement at 13:30pm UK time and then quite volatile afterwards.

I will be back in front of my screens next Tuesday so I hope you all have a nice relaxing weekend.

Market Update:

Main news in the markets this morning is the ‘flash-crash’ of the UK pound overnight – and there many theories circulating across trading floors today as to why this has occurred but one favourite seems to be a ‘fat-finger’ trade where a large sell order was instigated by mistake and then various automated trading software noted the falling price and joined in on the bearish activity but another possibility was a Financial Times story that quoted French President Hollande commenting that the UK Brexit was not going to be an easy process.  The result was an initial fall of around 6% to a new 31-year low before it recovered.  The pound was already under pressure from renewed worries over the UK’s exit from the EU as Prime Minister Theresa May announced this week the timetable for negotiations but towards the start of the Asian session last night the currency experienced this dramatic fall but has now recovered and is now trading around the 1.24490 against the U.S. Dollar.

Equity markets in Asia suffered from the Pound’s fall and most indices ended down following on from a mainly pessimistic U.S. trading session yesterday ahead of today’s Non Farm Payrolls. Europe is opening negatively this morning although the London FTSE-100 is not bearish due to positive sentiment as around 75% of the companies in the index are exporters so therefore will benefit from the overnight fall in Sterling.

It seems as though the fall in the Gold value may be slowing slightly as it approaches the $1250 level, we may see this as a small support area – it is currently sitting at $1254:78.

Other news today is the monthly  U.S. jobs figure and traders will be watching the numbers more carefully than usual as they ponder on the timing for the Federal Reserve’s next interest rate hike – it is going to be an interesting day on the markets.