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

FTSE 100 ?
7200?

Interesting angle on the Greek problem. Sometimes the bookies are pretty shrewd in forecasting events:
"Bookmakers William Hill have closed their markets on whether Greece will leave the Eurozone during 2015 and on which country would be first to leave the Eurozone.

‘Greece had been heavily backed down ro 1/5 to be the first to quit the Eurozone, and we’d also been shortening the odds for Greece to leave during 2015. They’d come down from 5/1 to 3/1.’ said William Hill spokesman Graham Sharpe, ‘It is now looking increasingly likely that they could begin the process of departing very shortly’

‘Noone is interested in backing Greece to stay in the Eurozone until the end of the year, so we decided to pull the plug on the markets until either the decision to leave is taken, or the crisis point passes and a plan is put in place enabling the country to remain in’ added Sharpe."

Greece is a problem no doubt. Its contagion, that's my worry.

Any new news out there to cause 100pt plus fall ?
Greece ?

Probably this: http://www.marketwatch.com/story/stock-futures-tumble-traders-blame-china-regulatory-news-2015-04-17?dist=markets

It disturbed my thinking.

----=-=====

Stan

Thanks

very happy to be short FTSE, which has kept my portfolio blue today
have also just banked nice profits on both TW. and ITV, for no good reason other than that they were there for the taking

.

DOW
this is interesting .... straight through 50 dma and now threatening to break 25 dma as well

Seems there was a bit of a Friday afternoon sell off! Most of my watchlist has finished in the red. Hoping for a blue day on monday......no political connotations intended!

DOW currently down 330 at 17,778 and to think that 18,200 looked a real possibility just a few days ago

my FTSE short is doing very nicely, and i wonder if i were in uk, if i would have shorted Dow as well ...... i'll never know

if i had the balls, i'ld probably short FTSE250, but the spreads quite wide and the volatility cabn be scary

Did Greece pay the 193.7 million euros due on April 17th ??

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-04-17/may-9-grexit-date?page=1

did not hear to the contrary and dow recovered 100 b4 close

cynic

Thanks

Left some on the floor today. But cant complain. New highs before election!!!!!!

what's grabbed the market by the testicles?
it was up a fair bit earlier and i see it's now down 20+

Greece?

Only thing stopping market from falling through floor is ECB pumping 60 billion euros of QE a month into European banks.

Why not just give it all to Greece, and make them all happy little peoples again. :-}

meanwhile, the market has (at last) caught fright, though that may have something to do with greece
whereas it opened some 20 points to the good, it is now down 40
annoyingly, IG is having problems with its server(s), but at least i already hold a FTSE short