08:45am CET  ~  Flying back to the UK this morning to sort a few things out but back here on Wednesday.

Although markets in Europe ended broadly in negative territory on Friday they are starting this new week positively after news at the weekend that ECB stress tests on their banks came out widely positive, with only 25 institutions now coming up to standard at the end of 2013 although if you read the small print in the report you can see that most of those are now above the benchmark and there are really only eight left to do any meaningful work. Overall though it has been a good week for most equities here in Europe with all indices continuing the bullish mini-trend that started a couple of weeks ago.  Over in the U.S. corporate earnings are keeping traders in an optimistic mood and the Dow Jones Industrial Average and S&P 500 are well above there 61.8% retracement levels so the speedy sell-off at the beginning of the month seems to have been overdone slightly showing just how easy it can be to panic the markets when fundamentally all is well – the madness of crowd behaviour is alive and kicking.

News last week of a cut in Saudi Arabian oil supply was taken mistakenly to mean a cut in their overall production but it has actually increased slightly which has put further pressure on price so the U.S. WTI Crude has fallen further and lost another 60 cents on Friday to end the week at $81.33 per barrel and a move back to its support level at $80 looks a likely scenario by the end of this week.

The markets are generally in agreement that the Federal reserve is going to end their money printing exercise at the end of this week and this is keeping a cap on the Gold value at the moment and expectations of an interest rate rise sooner rather than later is not helping the bearish trend for the precious metal – it lost just over $2 at Friday’s close to finish the week at $1231. The weekly chart shows a move down to the support level at $1180 is a racing possibility in the next four to six weeks so watch out for bearish trading opportunities.

Market Close Friday 24th Oct. 2014:   Dow Jones 30  +127.51 @ 16,805.41  S&P 500  +13.76 @ 1,964.58  NASDAQ  +29.75 @ 4,042.02  FTSE 100  -30.42 @ 6,388.73  DAX 30  -59.51 @ 8,987.80  CAC 40  -28.78 @ 4,128.90  IBEX  +5.60 @ 10,339.30