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

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

I would normally have applied a FTSE short but you never know with the markets at the moment. Am short Wall St and EUR/GBP at the moment and have 3 futures long on Fortune Oil, so not much in by spreadbetting portfolio at the moment. Also watching Heritage and Tullow following yesterdays court ruling.. Rangold also worth a look at the moment..

German Factory Orders m/m 2.3% 1.2% -2.5%

--Gold did well out of the crisis years --Why isn't it still doing so? --Well, it turns out not to stand up well to nuclear threats By David Cottle Gold had a great crisis. Indeed, for a moment there in 2011, as it soared towards $2000 an ounce, you could hardly open your inbox without reading the gloating screeds of a million vindicated gold bugs. And why wouldn't they crow? As once-impeccable old nation states threw financial probity and triple-A credit ratings to the wind, gold was lifted by a perfect storm of vast debts and debauched currencies. So why isn't it having a great year in 2013? Alright, so there's a little more optimism about, but the debts are very largely still there and the debauchery goes on. Prime culprit Japan has just doubled down on the process. New central bank governor Haruhiko Kuroda has put his shirt on vast and aggressive asset purchases as a way of finally ending the country's two-decades-long wallow in the mire of deflation. Quantitative easing remains on the table in Washington and London, where in any case interest rates are stuck at record lows, as they are in Frankfurt. The Twilight of the Triple-As endures too. The U.K. had its stripes ripped off at last, by Moody's, in February. The other two major agencies are likely to come for theirs before long. And yet look at gold. Starting the year around $1675, it has just racked up a new 2013 low of $1540. This does look a little odd given all of the above. Surely the environment ought to be a little more conducive to our gold-bug friends than this? Simon Derrick, strategist at Bank of New York Mellon, has come up with an intriguing reason for gold's lack of poise. He thinks it might be because of North Korea's nuclear threats. Looking back in time, he finds that gold's allure often fades once investors start worrying about the bomb. From the buildup to the Yom Kippur war in 1973, when relations between the U.S. and the Soviet Union soured, through to the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980/81, which saw increased military spending and awful brinkmanship over nuclear weapons in Europe, gold has tended to fall. Sure enough, the current bout of weakness kicked off on February 11, when Pyongyang vowed more missile tests. Further falls came on the 19th and 20th, when South Korea was threatened with "final destruction" during the United Nations Conference on Disarmament. Tuesday's news that North Korea was reactivating a nuclear facility which could allow it to enrich uranium to weapons grade saw gold slip again. "Although it might initially appear counter-intuitive that investors should shun gold during times of geopolitical crisis, it does make sense," Mr. Derrick wrote. "As we have noted before, the only reason to hold gold is if there is a broad fear of currency debasement. In contrast, geopolitical tensions provide the rather more profound threat of the destruction of life and property." It seems to take a threat of nuclear magnitude to remind investors that even gold's haven status is, ultimately, merely a consensual hallucination. Happy Friday. This is an opinion column by David Cottle.

Mmmmm make of this whatever you want, best explaination I've seen so far though.

A year after the European Central Bank twice flooded the banking system with easy money, lending continues to decline as banks approach the halfway mark in repaying the cheap loans. Next week, nine banks will repay just over 4 billion euros ($5.3 billion) in loans during the first round of three-year financing in late 2011, ECB data showed Friday. Eleven banks will repay just under EUR4 billion of the second borrowing spree in early 2012. Total repayment is just over EUR1 billion more than was repaid this week. The ECB issued the two so-called LTROs at an unprecedented long maturity to allow commercial institutions to help with a looming period of heavy bond redemptions. Though banks were able to get through the redemptions, lending to the private sector has remained weak as firms and households in some cases remain unwilling to take on new debt amid the weak economic environment. ECB data released last week showed lending to the private sector in February fell 0.9% in annual terms, matching January's drop. Given that banks had at first used around half of the funds to refinance other ECB loans, the net addition of liquidity into the financial system was only around EUR500 billion. With next week's repayment, banks will have now repaid EUR253 billion from the two operations, just over half of the created net liquidity.

CAD Employment Change -54.5 K 6.8K 50.7K

CAD Trade Balance -1.0B 0.2B -0.2B

CAD Unemployment Rate 7.2% 7.1% 7.0%

USD Non-Farm Employment Change 88K 198K 236K

USD Trade Balance -43.0B -44.8B -44.4B

USD Unemployment Rate 7.6% 7.7% 7.7%

USD Average Hourly Earnings m/m 0.0% 0.2% 0.2%

Wall street shorts closed, very nice profit taken..