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

6453 gone long

Snap (6,450.8)

with dow tumbling through 16500, that sounds quite brave
i'm far too old and slow :-( but eventually got round to shorting dow at 15552
there is certainly a temptation to reverse that again now dow has (already) dropped to ~15450, so shall try to pay attention :-)

15440 debating a DOW long also now..

so banked that juicy profit and opened small(er) long at 15457

dow dithering at this level, so fingers x-ed that a sharp bounce is the next move and not the reverse

I haven't bothered with Wall St. Think I'll double check that 200 DMA line again as not convinced we'll see a bounce. It looks alot more aggressive than it did back in October.... Note MACD and RSI pushing on rather than confirming support in the above chart...

Skinny, any ideas??

About the same as you really - I'd personally not touch the DOW atm - but that is because I'm not so in tune with it.

Cynic seams to follow it the most, we'll have to watch and learn from the old master himself.

Sadly Missing out on all the action on nights from last night till Thursday morning, so trading limited till then. Stayed short on UKX over weekend so nice profit banked this aft. Emerging markets destroying ADN at mo, must be close to a buy perhaps 360ish tempting.

when my brain's in tune - not that often i'm afraid - i have had a pretty good record with dow

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banked little 18 point profit and reversed again, but with an even smaller exposure .... may trade a bit more when i get home and during the evening, but certainly if bears can gallop, they're having a whale of a time at the moment (lots of nice mixed metaphors for you all!)

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cash ftse showing down only 30, so that looks a pretty safe bet for a short too with dow now down to 15440

now small short ftse and added to dow short too

this is resembling a meltdown, but not with any real cause, except the further dow falls, the more automatic and forced selling is generated on both sides of the atlantic

Added to FTSE@6,424!!

dow now down ~300 and though cash ftse only down 40, it's surely a racing certainty that it'll be quickly down a lot more than that after tomorrow's open, so have doubled up

skinny - long or short?

Long - but not looking too smart!

i've now banked all my dow short positions and managed to recoup a big chunk of those muppet longs i held for far too long ..... still short ftse on the basis of what i wrote above

surely there's going to be an awful lot of forced selling in the morning - perhaps even of blnx!

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I was short both DOW FTSE yesterday,went well ,i'm thinking long this afternoon ? a small bounce for the DOW ? i don't usually play the indices as i'm generally rubbish at it .

concur re dow and have just placed same

Closed one FTSE long @6,465.3 +41.3, still holding from 6,450.8.