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

I got rather badly burned last week - and not on a sandy beach, either :( So I'm currently staying out of the indices but have been reading a few analysts change their tune this week:
Whereas previously they were talking about 'buying on the dips' they have now turned to 'selling on the rallies'.

This would be my inclination, too. But as I can't always be keeping an eye on the screen, I'm not risking anything for the moment - just savouring my profits on BLNX and on my own activities outside trading

USD Core Durable Goods Orders m/m 1.9% consensus 0.3% previous 1.0%

USD Durable Goods Orders m/m -5.2% consensus -4.8% previous 4.3%

".........and on my own activities outside trading". Being a bloke, my imagination is now out of control. A pointer in the right direction would relieve the pressure a bit! ;o)

LOLLLL Harrycat! :))

I shall let your fevered imagination work overtime - I'm sure it would be good for you!

I'm working on some games, some of which I originally published for the BBC Micro - yes, remember that?? Someone recently suggested I should bring them into the new millennium and produce them as 'Apps'.

So: if you know anyone who could help with the programming/e-marketing let me know :-) I've found a couple of guys who may be able to do it but not sure yet.

Still waiting for Elite.

:) It all seemed so innovative in those days, didn't it!

Pre the micro, I used to write games in COBOL & SCL on a mainframe in quite periods.

That must have been quite a challenge Skinny!

Bleeding edge in 1978! :-)

Like the punch-tape!

Showed my nieces some games on an Atari VCS, laughter wasn't the reaction I was after. Guess there's been a bit of a jump. :)

Apps seems like the days of bedroom programmers - and throw in things like the Raspberry Pi.

Yep - quite a minefield out there, tiptoeing through the bedrooms :)

I'm impressed your Atari is still functioning!

I remember the BBC, we had one at school, but my first computer was the Sinclair Spectrum +2 with its tape loader... Ideal for software piracy as high-speed dubbing was all the rage...

Quite so Shortie - and I lost quite a lot of sales in those days of software piracy. What a fuss those tapes were eh? Kids nowadays can't believe I'm serious when I talk about those lol

yeh except it took The Lords of Midnight about 20 mins to load and the b*stard would only crash right at the end!

Too right Davai, or you'd play a level then have to wait for the next one to load and it'd crash... And the noise to it made. Commodore 64 owners used to get music when games loaded but if you had a 464 or a Speccy you got the horrible sound of data... Roll on the Amiga and it all changed, if you could afford one that was..

Yep... one step at a time, mine went the 16k/48k/plastic keys/128k upgrade route!

Never did finish Manic miner though!

Brother wrote a couple of games that were rated 'Crash smash' at the time...

Did you ever have the book 'Peek, Poke, Byte & Ram' Shortie? - that was for the Sinclair ZX81 so maybe before your time. It was one of my creations - great title, dreamt up by a friend at some wild publishers' party

Toya - Atari - sadly the box has gone to a farm in Wales.