Woohoo! It's back to work for everyone and this time there's some good news.

While the majority of people took advantage of the perfect storm of bank holidays to take a whole week off between Christmas and New Year, the global share markets were still recovering from a massive year-long hangover and they continued the pre-Chrimbo bounce-back with style.

For the first time since the fall of Lehman Brothers, which signalled the start of all things bad, the FTSE 100 share index, of the top 100 UK companies, has topped 5500 points on just the first working day of 2010.

It was a bit of a 'Will it or won't it?' scenario, but with France and Germany also recording rises on their exchanges and Wall Street notching a hike on the Dow Jones then the rally has continued and long may it last.

To add to the good news it looks like some of our big retailers are also on the up. Argos, which also owns Homebase, and Kingfisher, owner of rival B&Q also enjoyed stock rises – by 5% and 3% respectively. Mind you, with the money that B&Q have spent on TV advertising over Christmas, you'd hope they would see some improvement, they seem to be advertising their kitchens every five minutes.

Marks & Spencer are also expected to announce a sales growth over Christmas and that has stood their share price in good stead, up by 3%.

And the good news seems to be catching. So much so that even RBS, the UK's leading zombie bank – dead but kept alive by taxpayers' blood – has announced a 10% gain in its share price. Who woulda thunk? That could mean that one day, this monster of the financial world will be strong enough to go it alone once more.

But there's still a long way to go. With RBS shares at around 30p, they are well short of the 50p needed to break even.

So don't hold your breath just yet.