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

Your betting on a repeat of yesterday then Skinny.. 6577 would be the upside target but it's looking 50/50 to me... Good luck with that, I might well still hop onboard.. The downside risk however is 6360 if short term support breaks and I don't fancy being caught on a Friday afternoon sell off..

To quote Cynic "If in doubt, do nowt"..

I'm out for +15 - that's me done.

Think I'll call it a day, still have long Dec futures in Advanti 155.34, Amara 13.60 and Gulf Keystone 177.74.

with dow down <20 at time of writing after about -130 demonstrates why it is currently such a dangerous playground

Just close FTSE short +35 - nice start to the week.

Well done Skinny, I've just turned me computer on to start looking for a position

banks in general are taking a hammering on the back of BARC's figures, rights issue and other sundry statements ...... BARC sp is only 9p above the 200 dma line (about 285 i think) from where it may well bounce

so merely as a thought for the day ...... while watching say BARC, perhaps consider taking a long in Bank Sector, but be prepared for scary volatility as is common in all these sector bets

Not for me Cynic, the banking sector is one that I steer clear of. When the sector becomes transparent then maybe I'll invest in it.

Barclays is typical, the bank never wrote down its bad debt and now has to go cap in hand to investors for a bail out to shore itself up. You can bet theres plenty more bad debt within the sector that will need to be written down at some point causing balance sheets to be shored up.

It also strikes me that the low interest rate has to be hurting banks bottom lines. So if I were to make a sector bet I'd be going short.

it was merely "thought for the day" rather than a marriage proposal!

i think it's pretty disgusting that every single bank said it had cleared out its augean messes 2/3 years ago ..... and then suddenly, it's whoops, here's another whopping pile that somehow we overlooked

Interesting to see while Barc is being punished, but HSBC and UBS are rising.

The difference is in the honesty and reputation of their managers over the years, IMO.

I think the clearing out process will go on for years as debt becomes re-structured and risks change. I don't believe that years of excessive lending and CDO packaging has been dealt with yet. Banks declare CDO's as assets on their balance sheets but don't define how much of assets are CDO's, what they're linked to and what risk if any exist against them being repaid in full. There's also the question of how much of this debt is unsecured personal loans or credit card debt and also of the secured debt mortgages does the asset cover the debt and by how much. Its all one very large can of worms due to the nature of the sector and its continuing need to create liquidity out of debt to drive growth.

markets now digesting BARC's pronouncements and seemingly now taking a dim(mer) view

FTSE 100, 6567 gone short. Lets see how long the trend holds up.

Good luck Shortie, I was short from 6,594 to 6,574 earlier - now just watching/waiting.

Re the banking sector, Robert Peston's book 'How do we fix this mess' makes an excellent read, and makes clear the dilemma that banks have between capital and exposure.

skinny + shortie - i know both of you try to scalp in the market, so where do you set your stops? .... merely being nosey as not for me

For index trading, I use a 10 minute chart (also have a 5 minute running) using points calculated as per Frank Ochoa's method - shown to me by Klal ( a fellow poster ) also conventional pivot S1,2,3 etc and of course personal feeling, news etc on the day.

R1 today was @6,596.36 and as posted above, I went short @6,594.

I closed on the bounce back up through the pivot point (6,570.25) @6,574.

Stops/limits depend whether I'm watching or not.

Stops and trailers all depends on what I'm trading, how much I'm trading and how volitile the trade currently is.

Right now I'm shorting the FTSE without a stop in place, the bets small and the market isn't volitile. My bet gives me a foothold in the trend I currently see on the 1hr chart. If the trend continues then I'll add to the position. If the upper channel gets broken about 6590 right now I'd be looking to close and take a loss, this is where my initial stop would be placed also as per the above chart (top diagonal resistance line).

I don't really scalp the market though, I just look for a strong trend or a developing trend and jump on the band wagon. I also trade futures in equities which I feel are under priced or again are trending strongly.

6597 extended short on FTSE

6597 extended short on FTSE