08:25am  ~  I shall be back home at lunchtime after a nice few days up here in London, so there may be some trading later on.

There was a surprising rally in the markets yesterday after President Putin promised he was not going to split Ukraine, although there is little proof of his intentions as there is thousands of Russian troops sitting on Ukraine’s eastern border with guns loaded. The European markets are set to open flat as traders hunker down before the FOMC statement tonight, as nobody wants to be holding stock in the wrong direction in case the Fed Chairman drops a surprise on the markets. Expectations are for another $10 billion cut in tapering and it would seem that markets are quite comfortable with this but, like Bank of England Governor Mark Carney, Janet Yellen is also expected to abandon forward guidance and go for her type of ‘foggy’ guidance.  As the US unemployment rate is getting near the FOMC’s threshold of 6.5%, like Mark Carney and the MPC, she will be looking for a less restrictive monetary tightening line in the sand and a way of keeping rates low for as long as possible. As there was a ‘Putin Rally’ in equities yesterday there’s no real surprise that Gold eased back $11 to $1367 but only a drop below $1355 mark would change its short term outlook to the downside.

23:40pm  ~  I did not get back home here until just after 9pm after a few diversions on the way home, so there’s been no trading for me today, although looking at the charts this evening, I did not miss much – the markets were quite volatile after Janet Yellen’s comments earlier.