Thursday Evening

The volatility of the markets is terrifying. Here's just one comment....

"We have a manic-depressive market,'' said Frederic Dickson, who helps oversee about $20 billion as chief market strategist at D.A. Davidson & Co. in Lake Oswego, Oregon. "The speed at which markets are reacting to news right now is close to mind-numbing"

This is a bad thing. Markets need stability, not 1000 point per day swings so while one is tempted to think of the DJIA up by 400 points as 'good', we would have been much more satisfied with a 200 point recovery ending the day in negative territory.

The news this afternoon is the the Ukraine and Hungary are going the same way as Iceland, and have asked the IMF (us) for help. I think it's unlikely that the Asian markets will follow the Dow up tonight, but at the moment anything is possible. The markets are in turmoil.

I think that the Euro is stabilising now, as I predicted earlier this week. We should be near the bottom and I expect it to rise against the dollar before long.

Gold bullion continues to be very hard to source despite the 'price' of gold having plunged to just over $800 today. There are a number of theories but the most likely is that most of the 'gold' market is in gold derivatives - or 'paper gold'. Those who have taken delivery of gold bullion will know that their holdings continue to show a profit and the price continues to rise.