Fraudsters Beware the Fate of Bernard Madoff

Yesterday Bernard Madoff, the disgraced financier, was jailed for 150 years for orchestrating the $65 bn fraud. The heavy sentence is a little pointless given that he is 71 years old, however it does reflect the severity of the crime and certainly sends a message to would be fraudsters…

Late trading yesterday on Wall Street and in Asian equities pushed up commodities; crude oil moved up 3.4%, copper and Gold also gained. This reflected increased risk sentiment in the markets. This led to the usual swings in the markets with the USD and Yen broadly sold.

EUR/USD pushed back up to 1.41, GBP/USD pushed over the 1.66 resistance level to a high of 1.6743 and GBP/EUR pushed through 1.18 to a high of 1.1850.

Look out for data from the US later in the form of consumer confidence and the Chicago Purchasing Managers Index, again if we see good data this should help the risk appetitie sentiment and fuel further sellling of USD.

Report by Phil McHugh