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

quite probably :-)
what's that strange straight green line then?

Green is Kijun-Sen set to 26 periods.

Sound like a Karate expert Shortie !

More to do with momentum than Karate. :-)

Yep, its what I use to work out which way things are going, how strongly and when direction is likely to change... Kicking myself for not going long right now! But ultimately there will always be another position. 6399.5 gone short.

and dow suddenly catches fright once more, presumably as crude fails to hold $50 again

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in fact, it looks as though $49 may even be breached this evening

One of those days, lost a bit, made a bit, lost a bit, made a bit...

I'm lost a bit :(

ftse has been good to me today and still have a couple of shorts running there

however, i am now starting to look at dow for a bounce at ~16345, and we aren't far from that
if it gets hit, i'll close all my ftse short positions and have a dabble at dow long

Oversold on the 5 minute..

just closed ftse positions at 6353.5 - so that was all good news
gone gently long on dow at 17349.4, so fingers x'ed

much as i am very happy to have made money on the short tack, the markets really are looking very sick indeed, and that is not good news in the real world

crude is very much driving market direction at the moment, but it has now developed a mind of its own
eventually it will settle and correct, though don't hold your breath for anything above say $70 (an arbitrary price) for a long time

february crude is actually <$48 ..... i have been looking at april as i can't find a quote at IG for cash/spot

i was hoping for just a running cash crude price (yours is february as well) as one can with dow and ftse indices

You want the Daily Brent Crude (Feb) 06/Jan if on IG.

i can get WTL (Feb) on IG easily enough too ..... i've switched my watchlist to that

wow! ... after a scary start, looks as though i may have called it right

all looking strong this morning EXCEPT oil which is down again to $47.65

i've banked yesterday's dow long profit, though a tad early
the market looks as though it's trying to bounce, but it's not very convincing, not least i guess because oil remains at ~$47.50 though i see it did dip to $46.81

i'll endeavour to sit on my hands :-)

I'm short FTSE 6398.5 with a cautious bet.