07:55am  ~  Up early and not much time for trading today as I am back to Essex this morning for meetings with builders and solicitors soon and then flying to Palma Majorca later to sort out a property over there.

On the markets yesterday there was a rather choppy session – both the Dow Jones 30 and S&P500 ended slightly down ahead of today’s FOMC announcement together with Fed chairman Bernanke’s final speech before he hands over the reins to Janet Yellen in the New Year.  As he was the architect of the U.S. programme of “quantitative easing” you would think that he has some thoughts on what is happening going forward into 2014 and many traders believe there will be a concrete announcement later this evening so the markets will probably be quieter than usual for mid-week session.

Gold had another bearish day and is now heading down towards the $1210 support level again and oil values were broadly flat ahead of today’s double news of U.S. inventories and the Fed announcement plus Bernanke’s final speech.