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

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

Caught me out this morning.

Cut very quickly, but did not go with the trend.

Annoying when you miss out on the wrong side

i regularly back the wrong horse, but current markets are so volatile, such positions often come right later on

however, i am not at all tempted to go long, or at least only if i was glued to the screen and could thus take a quick turn

Going long at 7089 was a dumb thing to do.

Could not have timed it any worse.

meanwhile, with the indices all over the place, there's plenty of money to be made (or lost)

no doubt fred has any profits earmarked to be given to unite, or direct to the labour party, not that there's much difference

others of more sensible disposition will just say thank you very much and stash the cash either in their current bank accounts or perhaps in their pension funds away from the ever more grasping claws of the exchequer

==========

for my sins, i opened a small dow short somewhat belatedly at 17920 to run alongside my slightly larger ftse short (7047)

silly billy me
anyway, closed my ftse short at 7033 before i frittered away all my profit
however, being forever greedy, i may extend my dow short ..... which i did at 17988

Looks like there are quite a large number of Co's going ex-divi tomorrow, so am expecting a morning drop in the UK market.

Harry - from the Trader's thread :-

Ex-divs to take 9.8 points off FTSE 100 on Thursday April 23