07:20am UK time ~ I have a couple of hours here in the study this morning catching up on emails and Skype calls then I’m throwing in the towel at lunchtime and returning to Majorca to experience some sun and get away from this rain.

The markets would normally be quiet as we go into the weekend as the world’s largest economy is away for the Thanksgiving holiday but we have the OPEC meeting in Vienna kicking off properly this morning and deciding on future oil production for the next six months plus the ECB President Mario Draghi speaking (hopefully) about some increased money-printing for the region just before lunchtime.  The 13 main oil-producing countries of the world are getting together to agree on production level until mid-2015 and as they account for around 40% of total output, they do have influence on how much crude is available across industrialised economies and so can dictate future prices.  Many of the smaller countries are keen for a cut in output to protect the value but Saudi Arabia wants to weather this current drop in prices to their detriment as their oil minister said yesterday that falling oil prices will stabilize on their own – expect some volatility in Crude charts today.

U.S. equities are again at record highs after economic news out yesterday shows it is outperforming European and eastern economies by a good margin – the Dow Jones 30 index finished 13 points ahead at an all-time high of 17,827 with the S&P500 following suit. As expected, with trader’s eyes on equities, Gold suffered small losses yesterday although it is bouncing back during the early-morning Asian session which was generally bearish overall.

Market Close Wednesday 26th November 2014:   Dow Jones 30  +12.81 @ 17,827.75  S&P 500  +5.80 @ 2,072.83  NASDAQ  +29.76 @ 4,317.99  FTSE 100  -1.97 @ 6,729.17  UK AIM  -1.39 @ 728.45  DAX 30  +54.35 @ 9,915.56  CAC 40  -8.89 @ 4,373.42  IBEX -52.60 @ 10,647.00   Nikkei 225 (Today)  -135.08 @ 17,248.50  Hang Seng (currently)  -116.30  @ 23,995.68