A bid to take Essar Energy private by its biggest shareholder has raised further concerns about the decision to admit several companies based in emerging markets onto the London Stock Exchange despite dubious credentials.

Another positive week for the markets this week to follow last weeks recovery in sentiment. The big move over the week was gold, which moved up 5% to $1,320 an ounce, a three month high, meaning it is up 9.5% for 2014 but still down 19% in the last 12 months.

It’s been a disappointing start to the year to say he least for investors in AIM oil and gas companies, with many favourites like Gulf Keystone Petroleum, Bowleven, Xcite Energy, Rockhopper Exploration at rock bottom.

Last summer I had some fun and games trying to trade gold miner, African Barrick Gold (ABG), and most of it rather unsuccesfully as its shares fell off a cliff. In June 2013 they went down below £1 and right now they are £2.60, an incredible recovery as a new management team has put in place new cost cutting measures to offset a weak gold price to boost profitability.

At the end of January Harvard Professor Ben Edelman caused a storm when he published a blog post on internet video company Blinkx called The Darker Side of Blinkx which caused the internet video company’s shares to go into free fall.

New Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen is meeting Congress for the first time today. Business as usual compared with the Ben Bernanke era by the look of it particularly as she is keen to maintain the era of ultra easy money for the foreseeable future.

The Falklands Islands oil campaign has always been controversial for all sorts of reasons. First there’s the agitation of the Argentinian government who argue that companies have no right to produce oil since sovereignty of the Falklands should be Argentine not British. Then there was all the drilling ups and downs with Desire Petroleum (now part of Falkland Oil and Gas), and Rockhopper Exploration.

The first 5 weeks or so of 2014 proved to be the fertile correction territory that was so badly needed after the huge gains in global equity markets in 2013. With worries about emerging markets triggering a sell off in currencies, the VIX, the fear index, spiked last week to levels not seen since the 2008/2009 financial crisis.

The US non-farms payroll data for January just came in. The data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics was expected to show 180,000-190,000 workers were hired but the number came in light at just 113,000. The unemployment rate was expected to remain unchanged at 6.7% but came in at 6.6%, the lowest since October 2008.

Another disastrous announcement from consumer electronics giant Sony with the company’s ADS’s listed on the NYSE down 6% pre market open.