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

Here's Wall St...

Largely divorced atm

i'm waiting to see if dow falls through 17600 and stays there
i've made a few shillings over the last week or so by trading against the 10 minute chart, but as i'm out for a few hours, assuredly shan't be chancing my arm during that time

With the thinning cloud a Wall St short doesn't look like a bad call right now, the problem being on Wall St is that current levels do have short term support as we've seen over the past week. A break of 17550 would support a short play better.

Just closed UKX @ 6,651 +39 and INDU @ 17,621 +69.
Will look to reshort on rebound.

Yes Shortie, we're either overdue some profit-taking or we are consolidating for a move higher I guess. (He said not committing himself!)

Nice one splat!

Ta skinners - ditched those miners from the other day on the same day - they weren't such a bright idea! :)

just back at the office and would agree that a bounce off 17600 is a reasonable bet, so shall have a look at that
however, am still looking for longer term short and agree again that 17550 is an even more important support to break if looking south

Dow Short, stop @17900

DOW
it's again dithering around 17,800 mark undecided whether or not to drop back south or use that level as a support

.

a nice little crumb of comfort ..... 60 points banked from 17878 to 17818

"Falling oil prices, meanwhile, are driving down expectations for global inflation, putting additional pressure on central banks to step up economic stimulus programmes."

so how gloomy a pic does that paint?

i'ld hazard a guess that it does quite a lot of damage to the US economy as it has been shale oil and gas that has given it (and the dow) a considerable boost of late as US suddenly became a nett exporter

i'm usually wrong on these things, but not always, but then even a blind pig will occasionally find an acorn :-)

Or even a truffle.

dogs have been favoured over pigs for many a long year, not least because dogs are unlikely to want to eat them .....

however, i read that HSBC think low oil prices will benefit the markets

Dow 20,000 within a year?

Think I might have to do some work and make some money for Christmas :-(

6723 gone short

Seems that the oil futures traders are happy to buy at $65 (WT crude) and then to sell at $70 with a subsequent fall back to $60 pb. They don't see any strength in the crude price beyond $70 pb at present. With that in mind, I'm not sure that I would be buying any of the oilers at present.

Video link to the right of the futures page. Worth a quick listen.
http://www.bloomberg.com/markets/stocks/futures/