News today that the United States economy added 214,000 jobs last month which was below expectations of 240,000-250,000 with the unemployment rate dropping 0.1% to 5.8%.

Brent Crude is currently down over a dollar a barrel to $83.5 a barrel with Nymex WTI Crude down to $78 a barrel as Saudi Arabia announced it was increasing the discount to USA refiners.

The October Federal Reserve FOMC meeting concludes tomorrow and investors on both sides of the Atlantic are wondering whether as expected the Fed will announce the end of the latest round of asset purchase schemes and indicate that interest rates will remain low for a considerable period

After all the selling the week before last the US S&P 500 index climbed 4.1% last week to 1,965, rising back above the psychologically and technically important 1,950 level.

Its been another rough day in the markets with the FTSE 100 falling as low as 6,070 earlier in the day before bouncing back to finish at 6,202, meaning that the index now yields around 3.5%.

With the price of oil dropping around 25% since and currently trading at $84 a barrel things are bleak for oil related shares. With Opec and notably Saudi Arabia apparently reluctant to cut production and focused on maintaining market share and the International Energy Agency cutting forecasts for global demand…

After a benign few months on the global stock markets, it has proved to be the calm before the storm as volatility returned with a vengeance last week and the outlook for the coming week doesn’t look any more settled.

US unemployment fell below 6% for the first time since 2008 (a 0.1% drop) with 248,000 jobs created last month compared with expectations of 215-225,000 jobs.

Brent crude is now trading just over $92 a barrel, close to a two and a half year low, and compared with $115 a barrel in June and WTI US crude is around $90 a barrel, the lowest since April 2013. Oil and gas shares have fallen as crude falls back…

There has been a big difference in the performance of big cap and small cap stocks this year with the Russell 2000 index down 3.5% year to date (after gaining 37% in 2013) and the FTSE AIM All share index down around 14%.