The business world takes a while to shake off the lethargy of the holiday period and market traders are looking for direction - any direction,  that gives them the movement they need to make money.

They have it with China's early poor economic forecasts for 2016, who after all are the world's second largest economy and if they sneeze a lot of us will catch colds.

The path of least resistance is down and this week, in thin markets, with a lot of players still on holiday, the senior stock markets have followed China lower, mostly around 2%.

Middle East tension is not helping global economics, though it hasn't had any serious effect on the oil price, as there is a world surplus of the black stuff for the next 6 months at least.

Next week when the world is back in top gear, markets will be more stable but for now the main story is China economic weakness and that provides the negative impetus traders need in the short term to sell stocks.