09:55am CET (08:55 UK time)  ~  No trading for me today, we’re taking our house guests sightseeing for most of the day.

If you were trading yesterday you’ll know just how volatile the markets behaved at certain points in the day – it was also evident in the size of some of my stop losses. This was caused mainly by the Swiss National Bank’s surprise announcement that they were abandoning the peg of 1.20 Francs to the Euro that’s been in place since the European debt crisis around 3 years ago. This move also caused the Euro to fall 2% against the Swiss Franc and rumours are that this move was all due to next week’s proposed ECB’s money printing exercise which traders have been waiting to kick off for a few months now.

Looking at the Gold chart, you can see that fundamentals trumped technicals yesterday after a resistance level at $1240 was broken, even after a couple of reversal candles had formed on the daily chart. There was a distinct rush to safe haven assets yesterday after the SNB announcement and Gold rallied over $34 by the end of the session to $1263.30 although it is slightly down at the moment at $1258.00.  There was another interesting day for Crude Oil yesterday, a lot of traders felt that the bottom has been reached in the short term and bargain hunters continued the buying that started on Tuesday and drove the price past $51 before the U.S. session opened and falling equities, too much supply and strengthening Dollar put pressure on the price and it ended the day at $46.23 and looks like it will be revisiting the support just above $44.

Market Close Thursday 15th January 2015:   Dow Jones 30  -106.38 @ 17,320.71  S&P 500  -18.60 @ 1,992.67  NASDAQ  -56.19 @ 4,089.65  FTSE 100  +110.32 @ 6,498.78  UK AIM  +0.06 @ 697.46  DAX 30  +215.53 @ 10,032.61  CAC 40  +99.96 @ 4,323.20  IBEX  +136.50 @ 9,982.50   Nikkei 225 (Today)  -244.54 @ 16,864.16  Hang Seng (currently)  -190.38 @ 24,160.53

Do not forget that Monday is Martin Luther King Day so it’s a Bank Holiday in the U.S. and this will means that volumes maybe down slightly for the beginning of next week. As usual, I don’t worry about trading on U.S. holidays.