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

i'm happy enough with my current "tart's car", but thanks for the thought :-)

Hairdresser's car, Mr C. I don't think tarts can afford that kind of motor! ;o)

I've made massive gains over a few weeks only to lose them over trading in the following weeks.

hairdresser certainly can't

now you understand why i regularly preach about the prudent banking of profits

cynic has the "sell in may signal" been raised?

you're the expert, not me :-)

cynic its pretty uncomfortable sitting on the fence...... sooner or later a decision has to be made.

cynic decision made which way is the exit?

HP up $3 to 24, sending a signal that high tech is there to continue to growing. I think we will close positive in the US and FTSE will follow tomorrow.

APLE is rising too.

ahoj long weekend in prospect.

confess i am surprised to see dow recovering from -120 this morning to currently just -33 .... however, i remain happy enough to keep running my dow (and asc) short, though the rest of my portfolio is long ..... i might also remind you that i took a good slab of money off the table a week or so ago

cynic wise move ditto.

bad boy hali, trying to lead me on like that; an agent provocateur in another era :-) ..... do you and your merry men also run short postions?

When you can get commercial mortgage at 4.4% for 600k, you shouldn't be worried.
....

surely less than that - that's nearly 4% over base and i'm sure i don't pay that much

If the market is starting to realise that Abenomics has cracks and the JPY hot money flows reverse, then one of the biggest casualties is likely to be Club Med bonds which is where a good chunk of Shinzo's free money has been going. In turn, that could easily herald a return of the EZ crisis.

Spanish, Italian and Portuguese yields all markedly higher today and rising.

glad i didn't allow myself to be panicked out of my dow short yesterday evening, as it's now rollicking along once more ..... need to check where next support comes

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14735 but say 14750 as potential target

Big swings in the dollar made Thursday a blowout trading day in the $4 trillion-a-day foreign-exchange market.

Citigroup, the world’s second-biggest foreign-exchange trading bank by market share, said it handled a record number of trades during that day, but declined to disclose the total Barclays, the third-largest, said it was the busiest day for trade in the dollar against the yen since 2008.

The surge in volumes came after comments Wednesday by U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and minutes from a recent Fed policy meeting suggested it might start pulling back on its bond purchases some time this year.

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