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

German Unemployment Change 4K 2K 13K

Italian Monthly Unemployment Rate 11.5% 11.7% 11.6%

GBP Net Lending to Individuals m/m 0.9B 0.9B 1.5B

GBP M4 Money Supply m/m -0.9% 0.4% -0.5%

GBP Mortgage Approvals 54K 53K 52K

CAD GDP m/m 0.3% 0.2% 0.2%

CAD RMPI m/m -1.7% 0.5% 2.2%

CAD IPPI m/m 0.1% 0.1% 1.4%

USD Employment Cost Index q/q 0.3% 0.5% 0.5%

USD Chicago PMI 49.0 52.5 52.4

USD CB Consumer Confidence 68.1 61.4 59.7

Any thoughts on the 'Go away in may' saying skinny? I am about to tansfer my stock ISA allowance into my account, but am thinking it's best to look for high yielders rather than capital growth. I know that is the object of an ISA, but you are even allowed some AIM stocks in now. The insurers were some of the best (AV., RSA, PRU) but with their divi's under threat, the utilities and the telecoms are looking favourite over the summer. Dull, dull, dull but at least a reasonable return. Just a question really of whether the summer is going to be flat or active! According to the Telegraph, over a 20 year period the summer months have been 50/50 split, so that's not much help!

I'm pretty much full time these days Harry - so I'll be here :-)

What I've been doing the last couple of years is to look for non front line recovery yield stocks for my ISA - so far its going very well, with the likes of HFD last summer and again atm, CIU, and a few others.

I've increased the ISA value by @40% in 12 months, @15% YTD - with this approach.

My SIPP approach is more boring.

I haven't paid into ISA or SIPP for 11 years.

Not even to move money from 'Dealing' to 'Stock ISA?' Why pay tax on investments if they offer you a tax free wrapper?

Only dealing I do outside of SIPP & ISA these days is S/B.

What is this TAX of which you speak? :-)

Interesting notes Skinny - I'm around 27% ytd part time on my ISA, just looking for capital growth stocks in my ISA, if they've got a good yield even better, SIPP much slower!

Edit - agreed about the tax! Aim is to get a tax free income from yield on the huge capital I will no doubt have generated when I retire :-)

If only Osborne would allow all AIM shares to be included in an ISA .

Capital gains tax, skinny! Very occasionally I get caught. How is the spread betting going??? Isn't the theory that 'if it regularly made money for gamblers, HMRC would tax it?' ;o)

h, don't think that's likely as the stock ISA isn't really for high risk stocks. Don't really want to lose it all before I get to retirement age!

skin thought ISA's were intended to help companies to attract investment from "joe public".

Pretty good going SC - I agree about the ISA yield - its more 'secondary' to the capital growth for people of a certain age.

halifax - I don't know about 'joe public', but I only invest for me!

Harry the S/B is ok this year so far - I have had 'disagreements' with several companies over the years (like most people) and don't really want to say much more than that! :-)

Share dealing within an ISA makes good sense in general surely, only down side that I can see is that you can't claim any capital losses, answer?.. don't buy any losers -):

I have a large slice of LLOY in my ISA, so God willing and a fair wind, I should be well in the (tax free) money by.........hmmmm........hopefully in my lifetime anyway!

We can but hope Harry - I have a few in the ISA and a shed load in the SIPP.

I have a fair few RBS in the ISA - so will be watching on Friday.

Anyone know "exactly" how much we (the public) payed for Lloyds? around 70p I heard this morning.

Stan pretty sure it was 72p. Harry hope you're about 60 otherwise my lifetime will be up before I,m in the 'tax free money' with LLoyds

Average price is 63.1p apparently!

Taxpayer-backed Lloyds share price jumps as it records £1.5bn profits

"After last week’s collapse of the sale of 632 branches to the Co-op, Lloyds said its planned flotation of the newly renamed TSB should take place “sometime in the middle of next year”. The Government still owns 39 per cent of Lloyds following its £20 billion bailout in 2009. Even with today’s 2p rise in the share price to 55.5p this is still well short of the Treasury’s average buying price of 63.1p."