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

FTSE trending quite well of late - S2 this morning @6595.71 - FTSE touched 6594.23.

you're only partially right ..... i certainly made a couple of bad calls and chickened out when i should not have done, but it merely made a dent in my profit s made since 6th April .... however, i'm also running a biz so have not been as sharp-eyed, witted and fingered as i should have been .... but yes, this massive volatility is heaven for the professional

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golf at my very smart snob's club about midday today! :-)

merely as an aside, guests are often amazed at what a friendly place it is

What kind of a business do you run Cyners?. Something related to golf?.

Anyway delegate it down like I do. You have to have confidence in your staff.

related to shipping chemicals and also oilfield stuff
don't worry - i'm actually quite good at delegating, but certain aspects i keep for myself as though they're often tricky and/or stressful, they're also fun

Interesting, have a good game of golf old Bean im off to do some more lawn mowing.

ps, warn hays about his drinking, cant be doing much for his liver.

lawn mowing is for the peasants :-)

wow! what happened to dow late on = -204 at close???? ...... have missed a lot of chances to trade (stupid boy!) but glad i had a short running, though it was looking pretty stupid at times

Despite the gloom of the last week, May has been my most profitable month this year. I think June won't be so good!

DOW
around 14750 is a possibility - currently 15110, so not that far
will prob put a stop on my current short in case there's a sharp bounce


FTSE
6550 is prob not a bad buying level

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it seems to me that uk is in a somewhat strange position
unemployment is arguably/probably falling from its current 7.8% (or thereabouts) and is certainly massively lower than in the eurozone where it stands at around 22/23%

uk economy is starting to pick, though there is an inevitable considerable timelag before that and its accompanying feelgood factor feeds through to populace at large
on the other hand, eurozone (to me) looks to be still deep in the mire which is a concern as this is uk's traditional strongest market

uk housing starts and sales are at last on the way back up, and that will benefit not only the general economy, but also certain share sectors

june is likely to see an £15bn structural development plan put out, though how long those projects will take to get off the starting line is another matter

£ will almost certainly continue its slide against $, though € which i have long thought to preposterously o'valued, should slide against £ and will certainly fall against $

on balance, i don't think dow's fall on friday night was any more than computer generated profit-taking on the last trading day of the month ..... if i can pay attention (difficult for this dotard), then i think there'll be money to be made on both dow and ftse long

a quiet hooray as seem to be getting the feel back :-)

typical contrary markets clunk in anticipation of good news on the labour front in usa

Thank you Cynic,
I think the situation in Europe is not as bad as it looks. Numbers are not representative of real facts, especially in Italy, and Spain where agricultural activities are high but many employees are not properly registered as employed.

you know that as a fact ahoj? .... i think not! ..... france is certainly in a dreadful mess; NL GDP (i think it was) fell 1% over the last 12 months (or was it just 3 or 6 months?); i certainly don't believe germany is nearly as robust as is put about; how many more eurozone countries would you like to check out

Spanish agriculture contributes 2.3% to national GDP. In Italy, that contribution is only 1.8%. Spanish unemployment on the other hand is 27%; Italy's is 12%.

If you are going to see black market employment in Club Med, it'll most likely be in the tourism sector which lasts only 4 (or 5 months at a pinch) each year.

Cynic, I agree about France, BUT Germany is in robust shape, they export the most to growing markets in the Middle East, India, and China. Their problem is finding skilled workers. So well educated young Greeks who know English are employed there (while they might be still registered as unemployed in their country). Many highly educated Professors from Greece came to the UK to work at lower levels too.

Hilary, You are right the effect is not much, but this is the season with highest activities in agricultural and tourism industries (off course weather permitting!).

ahoj,

Did you see the IMF cut their German 2013 GDP forecast only this week?

Germany's main export partners are France (who are in the doggy doo doo themselves) and the US. The US may be on their way out of recession but, with fiber struggling to go any lower than €1.30, it means all those Porsches and Mercs aren't exactly as cheap as chips right now.

Germany doesn't export much to the middle east, nor to India. They export a reasonable amount to China, but actually have a Chinese balance of trade deficit (ie. they import more Chinese crap for their own consumption than they sell back to the tiddlywinks). The Chinese Yuan is also kinda pegged to the US dollar and that doesn't make export conditions particularly favourable.

i agree with hilary about germany ..... very little of our biz has ever come ex uk, but from a demand point of view, we find europe seriously lags far and middle east and usa, and this has been the case for at least the last 18 monthsb

Up or down this afternoon and next week presumably now all depends on the US non-farm payroll figures?

"A reading above 169k will surely escalate expectations that the Federal Reserve will unwind asset purchases in coming months, while a number sharply below would suggest otherwise. Today’s figure for that reason will dominate headlines, influencing price-action until the Fed’s next policy meeting this month,"

USD/JPY and GBP/JPY are my favourites at the moment.