06:55am   An early start for me today as I am doing a trial run this morning of my new ‘Trade Guidance’ daily email service (more details here in the diary soon).  Apart from that, I shall be around the house most of the day catching up on emails and doing some chart watching from time to time.

Two main pieces of news is dominating the market at the moment, firstly the upbeat employment numbers released in the U.S. on Friday and also the Chinese Central Bank’s decision to cut their minimum lending rate by 25 base points to 5.10%.  Friday’s Non Farm Payroll number indicated that the U.S. employers had added just over 223,000 jobs to the economy in April although the general consensus is that the Fed will not take this as a hint to raise their interest rate earlier than the end of the year. All this sentiment conspired to lift both main U.S. indices on Friday and the main Dow Jones 30 rose over 220 points to end at 18,191 with the broader S&P 500 also gaining well over 1% on the day.

China’s interest rate drop is a move by their Central Bank to boost development although the largely government-driven slowdown in the economy was widely tipped as the recent non-stop rise could not really be sustained for long periods. They also have a problem in their property sector after a sharp rise in prices due to speculative developers although last month’s tax cuts and this latest rate drop is not going to help stop another housing bubble.

Here in Europe the Greek problem is ongoing with repayment headlines all over the press – there is over €2.4billion due before the middle of next month to its IMF and ECB paymasters so there’s going to be more searching behind the sofa yet again in order to meet their obligations. The situation is made more difficult as the new anti-austerity Syriza government has said it will not go back on election promises, so making any negotiations with the rest of Europe tricky.

Market Close Friday 8th May 2015:   Dow Jones 30  -142.20 @ 17,928.20  S&P  500  -25.03 @ 2,089.46  NASDAQ  -73.22 @ 4,409.39  FTSE 100  -58.37 @ 6,927.58  UK AIM  -1.34 @ 751.68  DAX 30  -292.17 @ 11,327.68  CAC 40  -107.90 @ 4,974.07  IBEX   -313.50 @ 11,115.60   Nikkei 225 (Today)  +11.62 @ 19,531.63  Hang Seng (currently)  +74.88 @ 27,830.42

13:25pm   No trading to report this morning, I’ve so busy doing Skype calls and replying to emails regarding this new ‘Daily-Trading-Guidance’ service that I’ve only glanced at my charts twice in the past 5 hours and I’ve not even had a bike ride yet today.  Time for lunch at Lord Nelson I feel.

14:40pm  Got back 5 minutes ago and almost immediately I spotted a ‘short’ UTB trade triggering on my FTSE 100 chart, so I am in the market with a 21 pip stop loss.

18:00pm   Been in and out of the house all afternoon so I just let my FTSE trade run-on but I’ve just closed it off as the volume has understandably dropped off the cliff as the European trading session has finished – but the result is +28 pips.