08:55am CET (07:55 UK time)  ~  After yesterday’s disaster with the broadband, it has now returned – but on a day when I shall be doing no trading as it’s Non Farm Payroll day once again. Instead I shall be emailing, Skyping and generally having a relaxing time, but I will be out on a cycle ride at some stage this morning as well.

A glance at any chart will tell you that Mario Draghi and the ECB’s decision yesterday to lower the deposit rate to minus 0.1% caused some volatile moves,  it’s the first central bank to use negative rates. In addition, the benchmark interest rate for the EU was dropped from 0.25% down to 0.15% and the initial reaction was a sharp fall in EUR/USD although this was short lived. Speculation that these measures would improve the economy and attract investments reversed the daily trend pushing the euro back up – it ended 61 pips higher at 1.3660.   On the back of this news the U.S. Dow Jones 30 rose 102 pips to 16,832 another all time high for the index – the S&P500 had a similiar bullish stance, ending at 1940.6, a rise of 125 pips that occurred mainly in early trading.  Gold investors seemed to enjoy the news as well, the generally bearish trend of the last six weeks has been temporarily halted and the yellow metal ended up $9 at $1253.2