Well, what a week. Finally towards the end of last week the markets found some support. Now we're in that tricky phase of deciding whether to stick with this year's bearish trend or get back on the side of the bulls, hoping we have a bottom in place and that January's sell off was just another retracement in this long term bull market.
Personally I am on the fence at the moment and would like to see more confirmation of further monetary stimulus from the ECB, PBoC and BoJ before making a call. In saying that it does look as though there is greater value on the downside, especially when taking into consideration the global market sentiment at the moment.
Lets take a look now at some of the key data releases last week. The big event was of course the ECB meeting, which only happens every six weeks. Although Draghi and the ECB decided not to take any action at this meeting, his dovish comments regarding further stimulus in March supplied the support needed to finally turn the market around. In reality he didn't mention anything new, however the markets took it as reinforcing the "bad news is good news" theme and so went bid.