rather than pick out individual stocks to trade, it can often be worthwhile to trade the indices themselves, especially in times of high volatility.

for those so inclined, i attach below charts for FTSE and FTSE 250, though one might equally be tempted to trade Dow or S&P, which is significantly broader in its coverage, or even NASDAQ

for ease of reading, i have attached 1 year and 3 month charts in each instance

CAD Trade Balance -2.0B consensus -0.3B previous -0.2B

USD Trade Balance -48.7B consensus -41.1B previous -42.2B

USD Import Prices m/m -0.1% consensus 0.1% previous -0.9%

NMX3720 continues relentlessly.

One for Skinny - the cover pic that everyone's talking about! - I'm not sure if someone has already posted this... am I having a senior moment??

And here's a link to an article about that, from MarketWatch.com:

Washington Clowns set up 42% stock-market drop

Viewpoint: Don't fret - go bullish and big for 2013




By Ken Fisher | Fri, 11/01/2013 - 17:09






Despite constant fears, global, US and British shares ended 2012 up nicely - amazingly all up 11%. Expect still bigger returns in 2013 - the biggest shares up most.

Why be bullish when everyone is so dour? Because they're dour. Sir John Templeton, legendary US investor, said, "Bull markets are born on pessimism, grow on scepticism, mature on optimism and die on euphoria." I see little optimism and zero euphoria. Then, too, most negatives you hear are already well known and overly discussed, digested and already priced into shares. The fears are just cud and investors keep chewing it - over and over.

If it's widely known, it's either wrong or will little impact shares. That is basic to how markets work and people just never learn. Still fretting about the eurozone? We've fretted it over three years while world markets have risen. Or another Obama term - fully four years of fretting already done! The debt crisis? Fretted forever! We've fretted about a new global recession since the last one. The eurozone is weak, but the overall world has grown for over three years. Cud can't cause bear markets - it's bullish! If fears don't materialise, that better-than-expected reality helps boost shares - the "wall of worry" shares love to climb.

While investors chew cud, they miss ample positives - such as a global economy much healthier than many presume. The US accelerated strongly mid-2012. The UK exited its really rather shallow recession in Q3. China never hard-landed and keeps growing. Even the eurozone has pockets of strength. Add to that low global inflation, and we're close to a not-too-fast, not-too-slow, just-right Goldilocks global economy - with some leaders and some laggards while investors focus on the laggards (cud) instead of the average - which is what matters most.

Earnings and revenues remain above past peak levels and should grow - though more slowly, as is normal later in expansions. Increased gridlock in the US and elsewhere should mean little new meaningful legislation - a positive.

Plus, US, UK and global shares tend to be strongly positive the first year of Democrats' terms - whether newly or re-elected like Obama. The end of the US fiscal cliff debate provides clarity - which shares like. And US, developed, emerging and global GDP are all at all-time highs. It's a beautiful world few see. Very bullish.

One negative: US monetary policy - Bernanke keeps flattening the yield curve and sapping bank appetite for lending. Still, it's keeping inflation low for the near term. And, that the US economy has grown despite bad policy is a testament to the strength of both the US and global economy.

Be bullish and buy the biggest shares. When sceptics turn optimistic, they buy the biggest, most obvious and well-known shares first - mega caps dominate as bull markets age. Buy before they do - anything over £47.5 billion in market capitalisation - and enjoy the ride. Start with shares like these:

Johnson and Johnson (JNJ) is surely the most diverse major healthcare firm - spanning pharmaceuticals, medical devices and an unrivalled won't-quit list of popular consumer brands. It sells at 15 times my estimate of 2013 earnings with a 3.5% dividend yield.

If you believe in Chinese growth, believe in China Mobile (CHL), the world's largest mobile carrier, with 700 million-plus customers. It may be the most profitable entity the People's Republic of China controls. With growth comes increased telecom usage - making China Mobile attractive at 14 times my estimated 2013 earnings, with a 3.8% dividend yield.

This article is for information and discussion purposes only and does not form a recommendation to invest or otherwise. The value of an investment may fall. The investments referred to in this article may not be suitable for all investors, and if in doubt, an investor should seek advice from a qualified investment adviser.

thanks for your chart skinny ..... i have regularly dabbled and made money on that sector index, but pretty much by luck and "feel" ..... it can be a real money spinner (and loser) as of course it is very heavyweight and moves LOTS

Quite contrarian really when you think about it. If the markets are grinding upwards whilst everyone is pessimistic, what will happen when everyone thinks everything is now rosy?

Davai - I know nothing, just a glass half full opinion by this chap. Enough doom and gloom opinions are around, thought it made a pleasant change. Not saying he is right :O)

From The Telegraph:-Watershed moment for FTSE but don’t take it too seriously
On Wednesday afternoon last week the FTSE 100 ticker on my computer moved above 6,091. To most normal people, this random-looking number won’t mean much. To a nerd like me, however, it felt like a watershed moment.

'Not only did the FTSE fail to clear 6,100 in early 2011, it came close again in March 2012 before heading south. At the bottom end of the channel, the index bounced off or close to 5,000 in 2010, 2011 and 2012.' Photo: AFP
By Tom Stevenson
4:13PM GMT 12 Jan 2013
2 Comments
It meant we had moved past the level the UK’s benchmark index reached in February 2011 before the Tohoku earthquake brought the post-crisis market recovery to a dramatic halt.

By clearing that level, the FTSE moved into territory it has not been in since May 2008 and the pre-lapsarian world before a certain Lehman Brothers collapsed. Does this matter? It’s just a number after all and most people’s lives probably feel very much the same today as they did last Tuesday.

I can think of two reasons why Wednesday was just another day in the market but, first, two reasons why it might have been more significant than that.

A key concept in the toolkit of a technical analyst, or chartist, is the idea of support and resistance – the tendency of shares or markets to change direction both up and down at prices where they have done so in the recent past.

It’s as if they are hitting against a ceiling or bouncing off the floor. While these supports and resistance levels hold, the price or market looks like it is trading within a clearly defined channel. In the case of the FTSE 100 it has bounced around between about 5,000 and just over 6,000 for more than three years now.

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Not only did the FTSE fail to clear 6,100 in early 2011, it came close again in March 2012 before heading south. At the bottom end of the channel, the index bounced off or close to 5,000 in 2010, 2011 and 2012.

To see why breaking through the previous high matters you have to look behind the dry numbers to the daily, sometimes agonising decisions individual investors have to make about their investments.

Technical analysis is, after all, no more than an attempt to explain in numbers and charts what is much more interesting, the psychology of investment.

The reason why resistance levels hold is that they reflect points in the past at which investors bought and subsequently suffered losses. Getting back to that purchase price presents the investor with the opportunity to get out again at no net loss.

Now, a cool and rational investor clearly wouldn’t think in these terms. He or she would assess the investment with no reference to the price he or she paid in the past but, even if that cool and rational investor existed, he or she would be sufficiently out-numbered by real human beings and the resistance would be more than just theoretical.

So, when a price breaks through a previous resistance level, it really is more than just a number. It is an indication that there are no longer enough nervous investors left in the market just looking to get their money back again.

That shift in the balance of buyers and sellers can be enough for the share or market to move on to test the next resistance level.

The second reason why Wednesday was significant is again psychological. By throwing their minds back to 2008 and the pre-crisis world, investors can finally allow themselves to think that maybe, just maybe, we are through the worst.

The crisis may not be resolved but the healing process is well under way. That is an important change in sentiment.

So, I think the past week’s breakthrough is significant but, for a couple of reasons, it would be wrong to get hung up on the move above 2011’s high.

The first is that the stock market is better thought of as a market of individual stocks than a single monolithic entity. People do not, as a rule, buy the market but the individual shares within it.

As we move into the fourth quarter earnings season, individual results announcements are a reminder that a company’s share price is in the long run determined by its ability to increase its profits and pay its shareholders a dividend. The FTSE is just an aggregation of all these separate prices.

The second reason is that the FTSE 100 index is simply a measure of the capital value of a group of shares.

Our investment performance is better measured by a combination of capital and income, the reinvestment of which makes an often overlooked but massive difference to our investment outcomes.

On this total return basis, shown in my chart this week, we have been hitting new highs for a couple of years now.

Tom Stevenson is an investment director at Fidelity Worldwide Investment. The views expressed are his own. He tweets at @tomstevenson63
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U.S. Stock Futures Flat Before Bernanke; Apple in Focus

U.S. stock-index futures were little changed Monday, as investors looked ahead to a speech by Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and an imminent wave of earnings results from major banks. Apple Inc. (AAPL) is also expected to be in focus after a news report said suppliers of a key component of the iPhone 5 are scaling back production due to slower-than-expected global demand for the smartphone.

AAPL back on my watchlist as a potential stock to short....50990 support to be retested I think.

I've missed shorts on the FTSE 2 days running @6,132 & 6,142 - both by a gnat's todger!

AAPL - sounds like a good candidate.

Well I'm sat on unrealised losses with the FTSE at present, 6055 I'm averaging on bets but did manage to make some small profits trading 10minute charts Friday... I've done very well shorting AAPL previously and its one of those stocks thats been on my radar for another position for some time, 52000 should break today allowing a fall to 51570 this would set up a retest I think.

Shortie - as posted previously, I'm still net short on the FTSE and have tried (unsuccessfully) to add Thursday and Friday by limit.

I've had a couple of 20+ point shorts closed in the high 6000's.

I've also been scaling back in the building sector - so that at least should continue upwards!

I've never really invested into the building sector, had a punt on Galliford Try some time ago but have always preferred the likes of Redefine, Segro and buy to let Paragon over the likes of Balfour, Taylor etc. Inland has been on my wtch list for some time but I've never invested into it.

RBS has been gaining nicely and I'm thinking about selling out, wouldn't surprise me if the government decided to sell some of their stake suddenly...

why do they like losing our money?

Check to whom "they" sell.

Halifax - If the questions, Do the goverment like losing our money? Well they probably don't enjoy losing it but the fact remains that they still do.

U.S. Stocks Fall on Apple as Investors Watch Earnings

By Rita Nazareth - Jan 14, 2013 4:13 PM GMT

U.S. stocks declined, following a two-week advance in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index, as Apple (AAPL) Inc. slumped on reports it curbed iPhone production on weak demand and as investors watched corporate earnings reports.

Apple, the world’s most valuable company, sank 2.8 percent to the lowest level on a closing basis in 11 months. Sprint Nextel Corp. dropped 3.5 percent after the wireless carrier was cut at JPMorgan Chase & Co. Hewlett Packard Co. (HPQ) rose 3.6 percent as market researcher Gartner Inc. said it retook the spot as the top personal-computer maker from Lenovo Group Ltd.

Japan says confidence in Dreamliner at stake amid probes

TOKYO | Tue Jan 15, 2013 7:04am GMT

(Reuters) - Japan's transport minister acknowledged that passenger confidence in Boeing Co's new 787 Dreamliner jet is at stake, as both Japan and the United States have opened broad and open-ended investigations into the plane after a series of incidents that have raised safety concerns.

Japanese authorities said on Monday they would investigate fuel leaks on a 787 operated by Japan Airlines Co, and the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board said later its agents would analyse the lithium-ion battery and burned wire bundles from a fire aboard another JAL 787 at Boston's Logan Airport last week.

The Dreamliner, the world's first mainly carbon-composite airliner, is billed as Boeing's most fuel-efficient jet and a potential game-changer for civil aircraft. It was initially scheduled to enter service in May 2008, but production delays held up its commercial debut until late last year.