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

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

===============

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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Only a few more days to follow the "Sell in May" adage.
FTSE recovering well from the fall last week . Only 100 points to go before it gets back to the recent highs.
Question now is will it hold its nerve and keep on going?

It is very rare for any market to turn from a single top.

16% of time

For those worried about a big correction or a 'go away' sentiment, most of the broker notes I have seen are bullish about equities at the moment and are not predicting a dull summer of trading.
Below is a summary of the Morgan Stanley take on things:
"Latest developments point to more modest and volatile returns in 2H vs 1H. We do not believe the recent weakness in equity markets is likely to morph into a material correction in stocks, although it does highlight the risk that equity returns are likely to be more modest and volatile in 2H13 than 1H13 as markets increasingly focus on the prospect of liquidity withdrawal.
Sentiment remains somewhat elevated. We believe that recent equity weakness should predominantly be viewed as deflating a short-term overshoot in equity prices at this time, rather than more fundamental concerns. For example, Europe’s RSI hit a high of 78 and the FTSE All-Share registered an unprecedented 12 consecutive days of price rises in the run-up to last Thursday. While we do not believe investors are excessively optimistic, some of our sentiment metrics still remain somewhat elevated and hence may have a little further to unwind in the short-term.
Valuation undemanding – MTI is in buy territory. On headline 12m PE multiples European equities do not look particularly cheap (MSCI Europe trades at 12.5 and the median stock is at 14) however neither do we feel they are overly expensive. More supportive for European stocks is the fact that our MTI is in buy territory and the dividend yield remains above the credit yield.
Fundamental growth outlook should improve going forward. Most importantly for stocks, we think the fundamental macro backdrop is going to improve in the coming months and we look for Europe’s economic surprise index to start rising soon. Although a weaker-than-expected China PMI appeared to be the focus of markets last week, we did see German and French business sentiment indicators improve on the upside. European earnings revisions also troughed last week.