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

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."

Bow to your superior knowledge Skinny!

Google - not me! :-)

Lloyds launched a rights issue to raise capital from existing shareholders – as an existing 43.4% shareholder, the government chose to take part in this and thus maintained its shareholding at 43.4%.[36][37] Following this, the National Audit Office has calculated the government's average buying price for its entire stake in Lloyds as about 74p.[38]
Taken from Wikipedia don't know how reliable that is!

Ok so it's anybody's guess ie anywhere between 63 and 74p

Your return is very impressive Skinny. My wife uses a personal broker who returned 17.5%, which she's happy with.

GBP Nationwide HPI m/m -0.1% 0.3% 0.0%

GBP Manufacturing PMI 49.8 48.6 48.3

FTSE 100 +0.4% at 6455.26, nudging higher after the release of better-than-expected UK data. UK PMI manufacturing figures for April come in at 49.8, an improvement on the previous month and better than forecast. Newedge says the data is good news for the UK economy as manufacturing production remained relatively weak in 1Q and some improvement is needed to maintain the recent uptrend in GDP. Reed Elsevier is off 0.5% after a broker upgrade. BP rises 1.4%, adding to Tuesday's gains after reporting 1Q results. Later, attention will be on US data in the form of ADP employment numbers and ISM manufacturing data at 1215 GMT and 1400 GMT, respectively.

Now ploughing through the indices (FTSE250) atm, looking for bargains for my redeemed cash ISA money. Amazing how many stocks are currently showing very skinny PEG figures and many are hugely into a minus figure. Lots of div yields in the 3-4% category, but many Co's have what appear to be ok PE's, but awful PEG's. Onwards & upwards!

Harry - less of the 'skinny' - post any you think of interest please :-)

Just been limited out of FTSE @6,472 for +52 - any views Shortie?

If your short 6486 should be the stop loss I think. I'm rather exposed to the DOW and DAX currently so not trading FTSE.