The market seems to be selling-off on the back of limited bad news imo, apart from the dollar that is.

If you can hold your nerve and apart from any short term requirements to offload poor performing stocks, I have a couple!!, my advice would be sit tight. This does not have the feel of the tech(mining!) bubble at all. Difference being there are a lot of good fundamentals, unlike in 2000 when there were a lot of over rated nothing companies.

Phew! Scary moment there Stan!!! :o)
Symantics possibly, but I'm sure careers have been lost & won by 'Ups' which should have been 'downs' !!!

Looks like the FTSE is fairly neutral over the FED rate decision. Booted up this morning expecting lots of blue, only to find trading very slow.

suggest you revisit and you will find FTSE falling, DOW indications now down about 60 and $ strengthening againgst ...... perhaps i haven't been so rash after all, even if slightly premature in opening my positions, but one can never know that in advance

Laughing all the way to the bank now, Cynic, after successful shorting of the DOW today? Amazing how things change in just 24 hours.

not exactly but certainly much much happier than many

Having seen the Nikkei & the Dow fall over 300 points, I was expecting a big sell off first thing this morning. Dow futures are currently only 20 points down, so maybe the FTSE can ride out this particular storm.

I'm viewing the market with the expectation of sideways tracking for the foreseeable future, it has remained bullish overall this year, but every time it gets a head of steam now, events on the other side of the Atlantic peg it back, and long term holds aside, it appears a good time, currently to take profits as and when and buy back in on dips...

am glad to have been hedging with shorts ..... Dow saved me a bundle last night and am now making a modest profit on FTSE short ..... but do wish $ would strengthen, though took out 50% last night with a very small profit

Mixed day for dow with strong recovery at end of play, ftse future well up due to...

On the data front, the Labor Department reported the economy created 166,000 jobs in October, helping investors brush aside lingering fears over weakness in the housing and credit sectors. The growth in nonfarm payrolls marked the best showing since May, with the unemployment rate holding steady at 4.7%.

These figures are likely to be revised at some point as usual. I expect reasonable start to week. Next economics from states on tues with redbook on retail sales, job vacancies and public debt.

Monday looks to be heading for another horror with news that Citigroup is in a real mess ...... i am currently long both FTSE and Dow but shall be closing those PDQ and quite probably reversing same.

Leeson's losses were small change compared with the current ones irrespective on inflation .
As the losses grew, Leeson requested extra funds to continue trading, hoping to extricate himself from the mess by more deals. Over three months he bought more than 20,000 futures contracts worth about $180,000 each in a vain attempt to move the market. Some three quarters of the $1.3 billion he lost Barrings resulted from these trades. When Barings executives discovered what had happened, they informed the Bank of England that Barings was effectively bust. In his wake Nick Leeson had wiped out the 233 year old Baring investment Bank, who proudly counted HM The Queen as a client. The $1.3 billion dollars of liabilities he had run up was more than the entire capital and reserves of the bank.

Just heard on BBC news that Mervyn King has said that it will take months for all of the U.K. banks to report on their exposure to sub-prime debt. It will be intersting to see if the FTSE falls dramatically each time they produce their figures. I can't personally see any of them coming out with good figures; only either 'better or worse than expected'. Each piece of news should see a broker revaluation which should make for intersting times!

interesting quote on marketwatch about US yesterday "plunge prtection team did not want to step in front of a train"

for those calling a bear market the number is 12850 , below will be the bear

nasty reversal this morning and with Dow indications suddenlt dumping 100+ points ...... have heard, but can find no confirmation, that yet another US bank has horrid results due to sub-prime

curiously, $ has suddenly found some strength, but then it could not keep tanking for ever without at least pausing

cynic , wachovia

thanks ..... and that's a big bank too ...... had a nice profit running on FTSE long earlier and only a minor loss on Dow ditto ...... chopped both at a beastly loss, but hey ho ...... have also dumped some other dross from my portfolio, which at best were going nowhere and on balance were much more likely to fall

growl

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- Sentiment among consumers continued to slide downhill in November, as views on current conditions sunk to the level since the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, according to a survey released Friday by Reuters and the University of Michigan.
Both the consumer sentiment and current conditions indexes reached their second lowest levels in 15 years.
Monthly consumer sentiment hit 75.0 -- below Wall Street's expectations of 79.5 and the prior month's reading of 80.9.
The consumer expectations index for November reached 64.7 -- the lowest level since Hurricane Katrina -- down from 70.1 in October.

bank of america restarted the rot towards the close

BOSTON (MarketWatch) -- More warnings from the nation's largest banks of additional losses on mortgage assets Friday had investors worrying that more shoes have yet to drop in the credit crunch.
Wachovia Corp. (WB:Wachovia Corp
News, chart, profile, more
Last: 41.75+1.45+3.60
WB 41.75, +1.45, +3.6%) said in a filing to the Securities and Exchange Commission that it's anticipating loan losses between $500 million and $600 million in the fourth quarter, citing anticipated loan growth and the impact of continuing credit deterioration in its loan portfolio. The company said its asset-backed CDO portfolio saw a loss of $1.1 billion before taxes in October. See full story.
Bank of America Corp.
BAC 44.81, +1.31, +3.0%) said on Friday that dislocations in the market for collateralized debt obligations, or CDOs, will knock the bank's fourth-quarter results.

.......... \"dislocations in the market for collateralized debt obligations, or CDOs,\" .........


What they really mean is they ain\'t, and probably never will be, worth what they paid for them. Most CDOs were AAA-rated earlier this year. ;-))