Sentiment overall

Sentiment was strongly posstive mainly driven by optimism fueled by the better than expected US Retail sales but mainly due to better than expected corporate earnings reports which continue to stream in and surprise largely for the better. The Dow was at the centre edging above the 10,000 milestone thus marking a 10 Years flat trend for the index gaining virtually zero for the decade. The Dow ended the day with a 1.47% gain trading at 10,015, The S&P was up 1.75% and in Europe the FTSE advanced 1.98% in response to the positive sentiment and the UK unemployment figure which is steady at 7.9%.In Frankfurt the DAX was higher by 2.45% and the Paris the CAC40 rose 2.14%.In the FX arena the broad Dollar selloff continued amid strong risk appetite with the Euro rising to 1.495$ just shy of the 1.5 mark and the CAD at the 1.2 zone with rising bets it is heading for parity versus the Greenback. The FOMC minuets released later in the day revealed some Fed members were in favor of additional or an expansion of the Mortgage related Quantitative Easing pointing more Dollar printing from the Fed is not yet out of the horizon and a rate hike is even more unlikely. Markets in reaction to the news pushed the Dollar lower as inventors start to asses Dollar depreciation as deeper than anticipated. In the commodities arena Gold continued to hover slightly under the record high trading at the 1060$ zone, Silver continued to confidently move to settle above the 18$ and oil pushed close to 76$ with the 80$ at its ai