Betfair Official Blog

Still at Heathrow? This won't get your bags back, but might enable you to buy new ones

Daily View - 28th March...

Yesterday's market activity was a lesson in indecision. Markets went up, down, sideways etc but in the end closed pretty much mixed. Europe up about a percent and the US down similar.

The FTSE is likely to open almost unchanged at around the 5710 level having looked weaker overnight in the US late trading session, but deciding on reflection this morning to hold onto the gains of yesterday. As mentioned in yesterday's comment, there is a small sense of confidence brewing, but the next brick to drop (whatever it is) may smash this fragile blooming. For the moment, the buyers are peeking above the parapet.

The corporate news has been mixed of late but we have not seen particularly negative trading expectation statements from the various boards, so the temptation is to extrapolate this into a plateau having been reached.

On the FX markets, all the majors are unchanged except for the Pound which is down 80 pips against the greenback (under $2 again) and is at a new all-time low versus the Euro at 0.7894. This means that we are now over 15% down since last summer and against the median level of the last two or three years. The days of dividing a Euro price by three and multiplying by two to get a rough approximation in sterling are well gone!

With the dollar holding steady, as mentioned yesterday, Precious metals begin to look pricey. The cost of holding long positions begins to present a problem and with no currency appreciation to help out we may see a second leg to the recent sell-off.