Brent crude has spurted higher to near $114 a barrel and WTI oil rose over $107, levels today, a nine month high as the problems in Iraq and tight US inventories continue to worry oil traders.

AIM listed Quindell is never far from controversy right now with the company’s shares plummeting by 25% at one point yesterday and down a further 9.5% today on news relating to the rejection of its main market listing

Shares in the Kurdistan focused oil explorers, Gulf Keystone Petroleum (GKP) and Genel Energy were hit today after the Islamist militant group, ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq), took over Mosul, Iraq’s second biggest city and triggered fears of a break up of Iraq with outright civil war between Jihadists and other groups.

The market is pretty dull right now, though moving largely upwards. Market volatility is low, valuations are high and for the contrarian investors who have been betting on a significant market correction over the last few months, for now their bets aren’t coming good.

Today Spanish 10 year bond yields went below US 10 year Treasury bond yields. In early 2012, Spanish bonds traded with a 6% premium to US bonds (8.5% vs 2.5%), that’s one hell of a reversal!

The US equity indices are at all time highs and investor enthusiasm for stocks is being driven upwards by pretty good American economic data such as Friday’s non-farm payrolls employment report for May.

On 26th March 2012, the games console company, Game Group entered administration, another casualty on the British high street which hit landlords hard. It was purchased by Baker Acquisitions, a subsidiary of OpCapita the following week.

The S&P 500 is sitting at 1,948, a rise of 7 points after a strong May US non-farm payrolls number pleased the markets and means that for the first time since the last recession the US has made up all the jobs lost in the 2008/2009 down turn.

Shares in online fashion retailer, ASOS, targeting the “twentysomethings” dropped as much as 42% first thing this morning and are now trading down over 31% to £31.22 after a profits warning caused by weaker than expected international sales and continued problems in China.

Tesco’s first Quarter Interim Management Statement 2014/15 is set to be issued tomorrow morning and expectations are low to say the least after the release of sales data from a data auditing firm today.