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

a 30 pts shift in the ftse in 2 minutes just wiped out the profit I was making on my short !!!

Wall Street getting a bit frisky Baz, FTSE will no doubt follow until some sort of direction is established.

Here we are:

"LONDON, March 31 (Reuters) - European shares pared some losses after U.S. data on Monday showed business activity in the auto-intensive Midwest region picked up by more than expected, soothing some of the concern over the U.S. economic outlook.

Oil and gas shares offset some of the decline in the broader market as BP and Royal Dutch Shell both rose by more than 1 percent, while on the downside Vodafone was the largest-weighted drag, falling 3.5 percent after a broker downgrade.

The Chicago Purchasing Management Index rose to 48.2 in March, frmo 44.5 in February, beating forecasts for a rise to 46.0. Various sub-components of the index including new orders and employment also rose."

Sorry - double posted in my excitement and total relief!

so you as well as the indices getting frisky then!

Nowt like a bit of relief ;)

Cynic, from my (limited) observations, I tend to think that it's at least as important to observe the change in price before the due time of an announcement as afterwards.

Toya, there are often some silly games played before announcements, especially on FX; quite often the price is walked in either direction to allow closure of existing positions or to finesse a new position. Personally I never try to pre-empt the market nor read anything into movements beforehand.

Thats better - things have calmed down again - phew

Strangely I'm looking to go long on the DOW, might have just missed my opportunity (or not as the case might be)

Sod it!!

Think the DOW is impossible to trade at the moment over short time frames, keeps putting on 20 and then losing 20, best to stay out for now methinks, unless you're taking a longer view.

Just closed my short on the FTSE - its bouncing al over atm - made 30 points so ok.

My gut feel is that it will drop lower towards the close - but for once I want to hold onto my profit.

Great, close a long at a loss, 5 minutes later it gets a move on :(

opened a long at 5690.

I was going to sit on my hands for the rest of trhe evening !!!!

Wall St now positive which makes closing my losing trade even more galling, especially as I closed another one further down for a small profit. Should have stuck to my guns. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrr

I have found that the market is swinging wildly at the moment and it seems that no matter where you open a long or a short, at some time during the day you will be both massively in the red or massively in the black at some point in time.

The long that I opened this morning lost 50 points before it recovered and i ended up closing with a similar gain.

Not always the case though, dangerous game to assume it will come back to you.

am still long both FTSE and Dow .... will continue to watch and may well close part or even all during the course of the evening, not least because i am playing golf early tomorrow and shall not be able to monitor until about noon.

I'm back - and was taken out by the low spike that just barely touched my stop loss. Will have to make it up tonight, what a bore.

Pth: I do agree with your comment in 1606 above, re silly games and positions before an announcement, but it can give one the opportunity to ride on the back of that - bit like riding the crest of a wave; not that I'm a surfer!