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

AAPL
take a look at what happens when the market falls out of love with a stock ..... this one is now hovering at about $400 from about $700 mid september

this is why i won't buy ASC as i can easily see the same thing happening there

If you're serious about trading, I would NEVER recommend using a so-called broker who makes his own market and who trades against you. The spreadbet firms really are the worst of the bunch.

For currency traders, raw spread ECN coupled with the best possible latency is the only way to go imo.

Why don't you guys look at LMAX? It's a unique concept and, no, I'm not an introducer for them. :o)

The only reason I've also sigend up with Gekko is I like the look of their system. CityIndex keep exeriencing problems where online trading switches to phone only and it takes 20 minutes to get through.

"Due to a technical issue with our price feeds not updating correctly yesterday, we had to set most markets to 'phone only', which is why we were fairly busy on the phones."

Was the official response I got to which I consider their technical issues not my problem, they can either provide the service or not. This isn't a one off instance, it's the third time in a week.

GBP Retail Sales m/m -0.7% -0.7% 2.1%

The other thing Gekko offer is what appears to be a decent android app for trading on the go. CityIndex also have an android app which is very good in general. I expect I'll stay with CityIndex for future bets and move my daily plays to Gekko.

IG have an app too that seems user friendly .... trouble with those things is that they gobble up battery at a rate of knots ..... they'll be very expensive to use abroad too i guess

GBP 30-y Bond Auction 3.12|1.7 previous 2.95|1.5

(Reuters) - Germany's lower house of parliament voted overwhelmingly on Thursday in favour of a bailout for Cyprus.

Of the 602 lawmakers in the Bundestag who voted on the 10 billion euro rescue, 487 backed it, while 102 opposed it and 13 abstained.

Decided to short GJ again

Fingers crossed for a repeat of what happened at around 05:00 this morning..

Cynic, regarding your earlier comment on Apple, I think this share lost so must ground because high levels of innovation had been priced into the stock prior to the iPhone5's release. We expected alot from Apple who delivered a device marginally better then the previous model, there was no real step up in the same sense that there was between the 3Gs and iPhone4. Where as Samsungs offerings have moved in leaps and bounds over it previous models allowing it to gain in market share.

Fingers crossed for a repeat

So far so good..

Looking good for you Shortie.

cynic - this may (or not) be of interest to you :-

Should I buy shares in Apple?


Why apple dipped below $400 and what to do now

that idea is broken!

Verizon Earnings Beat Estimates with Light Revenue

USD Unemployment Claims 352K 349K 346K

I'm trading GBP/JPY to the long side today, Shortie, on account of how I've had a red squiggly uppy on my hourlies since about 4am. :o)

You can buy cream for that! :-)