08:00am  ~  We’re still in London and back to Wimbledon later on to watch some more tennis so no trading for me today although I will be doing to some emails this morning before we head off.

Both the S&P500 and Dow Jones 30 made fresh attempts yesterday to get back to record highs but in the end it was a day of low volumes and not much movement while traders sat on their hands waiting for a busy day of economic announcements today. The main S&P index ended virtually flat at nearly 1975 with the DJ30 adding just 20 points to end at 17976, still slightly short of that big number at 18K.  In contrast to yesterday, the markets are sure to see advancing volumes and some decent moves today.  It’s all going to kick off in just over an hour with the UK’s Services PMI numbers and then around lunchtime, there’s the European Central Bank interest rate decision followed by their press conference 45 minutes later.  Big news of the day is the monthly U.S. Non Farm Payrolls with the figures coming out a day early due to July 4th Independence Day celebrations tomorrow and no doubt we will see the Dow Jones index hit 18,000 at some stage during the trading session – but will it stay above that line ? Good ADP figures earlier in the week gives us clues for being optimistic today but it does not always work that way.

News that rebels in Libya plan to re-open two oil export terminals  so increasing supplies out of the country took the pressure off the  WTI Crude price and it ended the day down 97 cents at $104.23 a barrel even though Crude Inventories at Cushing were down more than expected.  With equity markets seemingly hitting a ceiling, investors were looking for other ways of earning money and this benefited the Gold price, it gained $1 finishing the session at $1327.7 although it did hit $1331 at one stage – a resistance level going back to April.

Market Close Wednesday July 2nd 2014:  Dow Jones 30  +20.17 @ 16976.24    S&P 500  +1.30 @1974.62    FTSE 100  +13.45 @ 6816.37