07:25am (UK time)  ~ Back in freezing Britain now but not sure how much trading I’ll be doing today, there are a few jobs around the house to do this morning plus I am also putting the finishing touches to my new guide on Binary Trading.

The markets are set to have a bumpy ride during this coming week – it all kicked off on Friday with lower than expected U.S. GDP, down from 5% for the third quarter of 2014 to the latest period at 2.6% although consumer spending has not followed suit yet and has risen yet again. Overnight trading in Asia has also seen falls in equity markets after weak Chinese manufacturing figures on top of the U.S. news. On top of all this, there is also the Greek story – the new hard-left Syriza party does not want to honour their loan repayment programme and there is talk of exiting their bailout commitments. These developments have got the Spaniards thinking about austerity and thousands of supporters of the anti-austerity Podemos party went on marches all over Spain at the weekend with rumblings on this subject in Italy as well.

All this pessimism has brought out buyers in Gold for  it’s safe-haven properties, it rallied over $25 on Friday to $1284 although there has been some recent profit taking and it’s fallen back down to $1278 currently. A sharp decline in oil drilling in the U.S. caused the WTI Crude price to shoot up over 8% on Friday reaching a high of $48.32 before easing back to a current $47.18 although further gains maybe coming with news of a nationwide U.S. oil workers strike brewing which will cut production further together with the value of futures contracts which all points to the fact that we may have seen the bottom of the market in the short term.

Market Close Friday 30th January 2015:   Dow Jones 30  -251.90 @ 17,164.95  S&P 500  -26.26 @ 1,994.99  NASDAQ  -32.92 @ 4,148.43  FTSE 100  -61.20 @ 6,749.40  UK AIM  +3.86 @ 690.34  DAX 30  -43.55 @ 10,694.32  CAC 40  27.18 @ 4,604.25  IBEX  -104.30 @ 10,403.30   Nikkei 225 (Today)  -116.35 @ 17,558.04  Hang Seng (currently)  -100.21 @ 24,406.84