There were few surprises from Ben Bernanke in his keynote speech at Friday's symposium of central bankers at Jackson Hole in Wyoming, though his initial comments did spark some volatile swings on equity markets.

Nevertheless, after the dust had settled, global stock markets maintained their upwards momentum as the Federal Reserve Chairman hinted that more quantitative easing (QE) would be necessary at some point, as he harboured some serious concerns about the US economy.

Financial trader Shavaz Dhalla said: "Bulls were able to claw back gains and once again prove that the hope for QE, even without concrete policy announcements, is enough to catalyse optimism within the markets."

Bernanke said that the Federal Reserve "will provide additional policy accommodation as needed to promote a stronger economic recovery and sustained improvement in labour market conditions."

He said that the economic situation in America is "far from satisfactory" with the "painfully slow" recovery in the labour market: "unless the economy begins to grow more quickly than it has recently, the unemployment rate is likely to remain far above levels consistent with maximum employment for some time," he said.

However, Michael Derks, the chief strategist at FxPro said that his comments were simply a reiteration of what everyone has heard before: "For his part, the Fed Chairman failed to really add in any material way to the last set of FOMC [Federal Open Market Committee] Minutes, other than to voice 'grave concern' over the state of the labour market and to assert that high unemployment might 'wreak structural damage' onto the economy."

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