High oil prices, higher interest rates and inflation, high individual debt, institiutions pulling money from ftse250 to buy bonds, massive trade defecits. I have watched my smaller companies and high beta ftse 250 shares plunge this morn despite record figures from reporting this week. Can somebody give me some hope things will get better and not much worse over the next couple of months.

sentiment Kivver , forget the news , trade what you see (as has been said so often)

Why buy and hold stocks when the general market is in a downtrend?it greatly reduces your chances of succsess imo.Why hold and hope have stops and cut your losses.

Kivver:

The trouble with news is, that once you know about it, so does everyone else, probably five minutes before you did. The thing is to read the map ahead.

A classic example occurred on Thursday when the MPC announced the 0.25% interest rate rise at 12:00 BST. The pound immediately fell (against the $), contrary to what might be expected. The rate rise had been expected and priced in days before by the markets, with a little speculation that it might be 0.5%. It was only 0.25%, so within seconds of the announcement, down went the pound.

Funny old world.

But if everybody sold we would not have a market?

Psychology largely controls stock markets i.e.peoples perception of events.