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

Bank of Japan Boosts Bond Purchases at Kuroda’s First Meeting

Bank of Japan (8301) Governor Haruhiko Kuroda began his campaign to end 15 years of deflation with a strengthened stimulus program that will see the central bank buy 7 trillion yen ($746 billion) of bonds a month.

With Kuroda presiding over his first BOJ meeting since taking the helm last month, the board today streamlined its asset purchases by unifying separate programs, temporaily suspending a self-imposed cap on some bond holdings and pledging to buy longer-term debt.



BOJ scraps overnight call rate, sets base money as new target

TOKYO | Thu Apr 4, 2013 6:09am BST

(Reuters) - The Bank of Japan decided on a radical overhaul of its policy framework on Thursday, shifting its target when setting monetary policy to base money from the current overnight call rate.

The central bank said it will double its holdings of long-term government bonds and exchange-traded funds while buying government bonds with all maturities, including 40-year bonds.

"The BOJ will conduct money-market operations so that the monetary base will increase at an annual pace of about 60 to 70 trillion yen (£498.9 billion) )," the BOJ said in a statement.

Quite a range (unsurprisingly).

6% rise in two days for the index. That's great.

Mmm - got my calls badly wrong last night - stopped out on both - hey ho

Nikkei was below 11900 on 2nd April, now 12630 (+6% in two days).

EUR Italian Services PMI 45.5 43.4 43.6

EUR Final Services PMI 46.4 46.5 46.5

GBP Services PMI 52.4 51.4 51.8

EUR Spanish 10-y Bond Auction 4.48|2.1 previous 4.90|1.9

EUR PPI m/m 0.2% 0.2% 0.4%

EUR French 10-y Bond Auction 1.94|3.1 previous 2.10|2.2

Sterling Steady After BOE MPC Leaves Rates, QE Unchanged

I've been limited out @6,375 +98.7.

Looks like that may be too early.

i am told that the downside target for ftse is 6125 though you may want to trade it in the meantime

for myself, i'm not sure what to do with this now very juice ftse short - e.g. AFR has taken a clattering this morning for now known reason ... i have a number of options, all of which have their merits

i can't work out whether the fall is primarily due to some last minute profit-taking for y/e or something more radical ..... in the meantime, dow is very whore's drawers but should be on a decent downward trend

followed the discipline - banked a very juice profit on ftse, in part because i'll be travelling tomorrow

cynic oil price falling warm weather coming!

AFR fall too big for that annual anomaly, but assuredly some big profits been made over the last 12 months

There must be a N Korean element in the markets to a certain degree, I'd have thought.

skin don't worry the"fat boy" will back down, otherwise he is in for a spanking!

He and his beautiful wife were riding in amusement park in N Korea earlier this year.

50 day well and truly broken.

The 14 day RSI is also showing bearish divergence implying that the move to the upside is losing momentum. I'm waiting for todays employment numbers which if they follow the ADP numbers will be lower than expected and should cause an end of week breakout and a sell signal.

Ditto Shortie - I can't see any endearing points in the chart atm.

1:30pm

CAD Employment Change consensus 6.8K previous 50.7K

CAD Trade Balance consensus 0.2B previous -0.2B

CAD Unemployment Rate consensus 7.1% previous 7.0%

USD Non-Farm Employment Change consensus 198K previous 236K

USD Trade Balance consensus -44.8B previous -44.4B

USD Unemployment Rate consensus 7.7% previous 7.7%

USD Average Hourly Earnings m/m consensus 0.2% previous 0.2%

3:00pm

CAD Ivey PMI consensus 52.4 previous 51.1