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

:) 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.

Awww

Bernanke due to start speaking again at 15:00 - now that is!

NEW YORK, Feb 27 (Reuters) – Wall Street opened little changed as investors awaited a second round of testimony in Congress by Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke for clarity on the longevity of the Fed's economic stimulus program.

Calming some jitters over the euro zone, Italian debt prices and European stocks rose on Wednesday after Italy sold the maximum amount of bonds it planned to offer in a debt auction though borrowing costs soared.Bernanke will make his second appearance before the Financial Services Committee at 10:00 a.m. ET (1500 GMT).

"The market got what it wanted yesterday from the Fed, so, as long as (Bernanke) doesn't say anything new, the market is likely to remain as status quo," said Joe Saluzzi, co-manger of trading at Themis Trading in Chatham, New Jersey.

Toya - A friend of mine had the zx81 with the rubber keys, it was the machine that originally got me into computers as the BBC at school had a dull green screen and was rather boring... I was fortunate enough to enter the market with a Spectrum 128k which I actully still have boxed in my loft with a load of old games...

I remember Manic minder, what ever happened to software writers Ocean who used to be the bee's knee's when I was a kid and produced all the best games??

USD Pending Home Sales m/m 4.5% consensus 1.7% previous -4.3%

Orders for durable goods minus transportation rose 1.9% and advanced for the fifth straight month. The gain was the strongest in more than a year, signaling that manufacturers continue to benefit from a slowly mending global economy, higher sales to American consumers and a pickup in business investment in the U.S.

“This was a really strong report as it indicates that businesses felt confident enough to order a ton of big ticket items in January,” said Joel Naroff of Naroff Economic Advisors.