Chart of the day: Gloom on FTSE

Britain's benchmark FTSE 100 index has got off to a bad start this year. It's not that surprising given the scale of the slump from major resistance around 6,800 in October, which was followed by another in December. The memory is etched in many minds and seems to be dominating thinking in the early days of 2015. The weekly Ichimoku cloud, which had provided support to the gentle rally the index saw starting in June 2013, can no longer do so as it is very thin. Indeed it is now more likely to add to resistance, producing a series of three successively lower interim highs, and weight to the descending trend line. Key support lies around 6,120.

Nicole Elliott is a technical analyst