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

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.

I'm still holding my FTSE long, DOW had more momentum than I expected last night and overshot downside targets.

Back to FTSE breakeven

The FTSe has fallen on 10 out of the last 11 days.

That reminds me of playing Roulette Skinny..

DOW maybe about to turn nasty again .

How quick did that turn !

6473 FTSE closed +20

I've now closed 3 longs in the 6,460's today - suffice to say, I'm not long atm!!