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

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..

Well done Shortie - managed 45 off of the FTSE - too much dithering earlier.

1hr Chart, oversold indicator, will short again after bounceback

Over 200 pips on Wall St I made, wasn't prepared to lose it.. I'll have ichy fingers now waiting for higher ground to short off...

Daily FTSE - Breakout lower looking imminent.

Stocks extend losses on jobs data --DJIA down 150; was down 80 points before --S&P sheds 18 By Tomi Kilgore and Alexandra Scaggs NEW YORK--Stock futures extended losses steeply after the Labor Department reported jobs growth that came in well below expectations. About 60 minutes ahead of the open, Dow Jones Industrial Average futures shed 150 points, or 1%, to 14381. Before the report, blue-chip futures had declined around 80 points. Standard & Poor's 500-stock index futures gave up 18 points, or 1.2%, to 1536 and Nasdaq 100 futures lost 35 points, or 1.3%, to 2750. Changes in stock futures don't always accurately predict stock moves after the opening bell. The U.S. Labor Department's closely watched jobs report widely missed expectations for March, as payrolls increased 88,000 on expectations of 200,000. The latest data are another blow to stocks, which had fallen this week on other economic data that came in below expectations. The S&P 500 index has declined 0.6% so far this week, as of Thursday's close, and the 10-year Treasury note's yield has fallen to fresh 2013 lows. Earlier this week, data on private-sector payroll growth, the Institute for Supply Management's manufacturing and nonmanufacturing purchasing managers indexes and weekly jobless claims all missed expectations.

By Geraldine Amiel and Sam Schechner PARIS--The French government is considering selling portions of state-backed companies to help improve its finances, as the crisis in the euro zone's second-largest economy deepens, according to government officials. The socialist government of President Francois Hollande, which has already said it can't meet budget-deficit targets it promised its European peers last year, is exploring how it could sell off slices of companies without sacrificing the measure of control that government ownership helps it retain. "As part of the budget restructuring, and the modernization of our public policy, we are indeed thinking about changing our ownership stakes," France's industry minister Arnaud Montebourg said in an interview. "We're not ruling out that kind of move, but we do not want to lose our means of influence over companies." Any stake sales would come as the government struggles to rein in a fast-increasing debt load with an economy that has been stagnating for over a year. Mr. Hollande has raised taxes and pledged to cut spending, but still has little room for maneuver as he seeks to balance the country's budget by 2017. The French state directly and indirectly owns controlling stakes in stakes in several companies, such as nuclear-engineering group Areva SA (AREVA.FR), and has significant minority shares of companies including France Telecom SA (FTE.FR), airline Air France-KLM (AF.FR) and car maker Renault SA (RNO.FR). Mr. Montebourg declined to say which companies might come up for sale, but another government official said that selling some of the country's 85% stake in energy behemoth Electricite de France SA (EDF.FR) would be "the obvious choice." France's national debt grew 6.8% to 1.83 trillion euros ($2.37 trillion) in 2012, or more than 90% of the country's GDP. In the 2013 budget, the government forecasts that it will spend around EUR48.8 billion servicing its debt. EDF's shares have gained around 12% since the start of the year, and France can lower its stake to 70% under existing law. Reducing its stake down to 70% would garner about EUR4.3 billion based on EDF's current share price. An EDF spokeswoman declined to comment. France's ownership stakes are a legacy of the country's dirigiste past, in which the company nationalized companies, allowing it to control most major industries and run public monopolies. Since the start of the 1990s, successive French governments engaged in massive privatizations, but retained control over what were deemed "strategic assets" such as energy companies. Selling part of the family silver has already been done by France's previous government, under President Nicolas Sarkozy, who divested 3% of EDF in late 2007 to help finance a fund for universities. But later, because of the financial crisis stemming from the U.S. subprime crisis, followed by the euro-zone crisis, the value of the stakes nose-dived, making the government all the more reluctant to sell any shares. Late last month, France raised about EUR448.5 million from the sale of 3.12% of the capital of defense-equipment maker Safran SA (SAF.FR), bringing the French state's stake down to roughly 27%. The government said it planned to invest the proceeds elsewhere in the economy, rather than directly pay down the debt or plug holes in its finances. France also cut its voting stake in Airbus owner European Aeronautic Defence & Space Co. (EAD.FR) to 12% from 15% as part of an agreement with the German government. The country, at least initially, has parked those shares in a nonvoting trust, rather than selling them.

FX CHAT: Slowdown in U.S. data complicates life for ECB

This is the last thing ECB President Mario Draghi needed. A day after his press conference left the impression that European policy makers don't have any bold new measures up their sleeves to ease monetary policy, the weak labor report in the US is prompting traders to push back expectations for when the Fed will start to wind down its bond purchases. That's keeping the euro supported, and the single currency briefly jumped above $1.30 recently, complicating the recovery for Europe's struggling peripheral economies. Euro has pulled back a bit since and is trading at 1.2991, from $1.2936 late yesterday, according to EBS via CQG.

14468 is the DOW support line, doesn't look yet like it'll end the day broken.... Could be wrong though! Any thoughts?

CAD Ivey PMI 61.6 52.4 51.1