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

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! :-)

VOD RNS going down well!

I'm out of GJ for now Hilary, I don't fancy the long position at the moment.

USD Philly Fed Manufacturing Index 1.3 2.7 2.0

USD CB Leading Index m/m -0.1% 0.1% 0.5%

thanks skinny; i'll have a look eventually but in fact i sold out of AAPL a good few weeks back and haven't been remotely tempted to throw more money in that direction

German PPI m/m -0.2% 0.1% -0.1%

Shortie,

Now you know why I was happy to trade GBP/JPY on the long side. :o)

EUR Current Account 16.3B 14.9B 14.8B