08:50am   I am not planning any chart watching today as I have many odd-jobs around the house to catch-up on but I will be catching up on emails and sending out the odd chart to subscribers now and then. I will be back in front of my charts full-time next Tuesday after a 3-day break away in London. I hope you have a nice, relaxing weekend break as well.

Market Update:

European financial markets fell across the board on Thursday with the pan-European STOXX-600 closing down by 1.6%. The German DAX-30 was the largest faller at -2.6% with most of the falls coming late in the session after the U.S trading session got underway.  The UK Bank fo England held rates steady for another month, going against current thinking where higher rates are expected to counter rising wages and inflation.

As the day progressed traders became more pessimistic and the main U.S. indices also ended in negative territory, the Dow Jones 30 index ended down by 4.2% and has now wiped out all the gains from this year and is now 10% less than the record high it reached at the end of January. The S&P-500 fell slightly less (-3.8%)  and the tech-centred Nasdaq was down by 3.9% to 6777.16 as Amazon, Microsoft and Facebook all fell by nearly 5% apiece.  Traders are still concerned over higher interest rates affecting global corporate investment and profits plus many have seen the market rise too far too soon in the past few months so this fall is still being seen as a ‘correction’ at the moment.

The overnight Asian trading session took its lead once again from the U.S. and ended mainly down, the Chinese bourses were the biggest losers with the Shanghai Composite falling over 4%. The Chinese stock market is unique in that it is not made up predominantly of institutional investors as most others are around the world but private individuals using their own cash to buy and sell shares so in times of volatility we often see bigger moves as panic sets in.

Oil futures feel on Thursday for the 6th session in a row as U.S. crude stock (and production) hit record highs and Iran has announced its intention to raise output, against agreed guidance from OPEC.  U.S. WTI Crude finished down by $2.10 to $61.54 and is further down this morning at $60.47 with a possible support at the $60.00 ‘Big’ number.