The market seems to be selling-off on the back of limited bad news imo, apart from the dollar that is.

If you can hold your nerve and apart from any short term requirements to offload poor performing stocks, I have a couple!!, my advice would be sit tight. This does not have the feel of the tech(mining!) bubble at all. Difference being there are a lot of good fundamentals, unlike in 2000 when there were a lot of over rated nothing companies.

LAST 15 MINUTES CAN TURN THE DOW AROUND FINGERS CROSSED,EVEN FEW POINTS OF BLUE SOME TIMES MAKES A HUGE DIFFERENCE AT TIMES.

Fingers cross, I hope the amrecians helps us out for a bloody change. !!!!!

headline on CNN after the close "attempt to rally fails"

take care

I heard on the radio that the sell off is being made worse by the volume of CFD's. You'll have to forgive my ignorance here, as I've never used CFD's (guess I'm too old school). As I understand it (experts please correct me), CFD's allow you to punch upto 10 times above your weight. In other words you can buy stock and just pay 10% of the cost (the margin ?). Apparently people that are long and suffering big losses on one stock, are selling other stock to cover their margin, presumably instead of selling both at a loss. Which is fine I guess, if you pick the right stock to hold. What worries me though is if one person is holding stock A, and selling stock B, in the hope that A will eventually rise. It goes without saying that somebody else could be doing the reverse, e.g holding B and selling A. In which case each of these traders is making things worse for the other. At what point would people be forced to sell everything they hold? Probably need a CFD expert here, but presumably if losses get too big, then the position will be closed, causing further falls? Does my head in thinking about it, but sounds like a big house of cards ready for a huge collapse too me.........

Strawbs.

Strawbs ,its 10% on main market stocks and 20% or 25% on aim stocks ,this is a shorters paradise right now , which won't be helping those long .

I see. Can you buy any stock on CFDs? I thought it could be bad with people holding just what they could afford, but if they can hold 4 or 5 times as much, then some of these stocks could be several times overvalued, and are only at the price they're at because of this gearing effect...... Can't be good if the falls continue...

Strawbs.

In fact just over 50% of all stocks traded in any one day now is either CFDS or Spread Bets so you can see why corrections are much longer in duration than what used to be the norm pre 2000.

Add in margin calls and stop loss triggers phew.

Theyve also increased Margin conditions of metals trading whioch dont help when gold etc drops quickly.

HOWEVER, this is just a correction in the resources prices. Lets face it, with all of these natural resources its not getting cheaper to produce them and they arent becoming more plentiful!!!

And demand is increasing!

Pommy - just because demand is (probably) incresing, does not explain the huge bubble in copper ..... check out near contract price with that in say 2 years, and there is no correlation at all!

the copper bubble was due to the chinese trader wasnt it
He made a huge mistake with a derivative trade and had to buy buy buy to close it!!

No Pommy ... that bit is history from several months back ..... I don't have a chart for copper, but I think (know!) you will find that the price for short contract has continued to spiral ...... There is a misapprehension (imo) that demand for copper is far outstripping supply; the reality is very different, with the two being largely in step.

Morning all,

Cynic, just wanted to add to my point about methane, CO2, but not go too far off-thread on EME. Cows produce methane. When burned this turns into CO2 and water.

Methane is more greenhouse-effective than CO2.

My chemistry is correct but I did a bad job of explaining!

Anyway, never mind methane!!

I see green shoots this morning. Lots of things bouncing - can this go on?

I doubt it. The market has gone into frenzy mode, up massivelly one day, down the next, have seen it before, during tech phase.

If your happy to ride it out fine, if not sell into the rallys. Today is an up day, I don't know what will happen tomorrow? It's a joke I know because fundamentally everything is sound, oil still way over $ 60 and more and more profits announcements meeting expectations, everything in the garden is rosy, commoditiy prces being maintained to some extent, but the market has gone skitso and that is a problem in the short term, maybe until sept then the trend may emerge, at the moment knowbody has the foggiest and I mean knowbody it is all guess work and short term traders/shorters have the upper hand unfortunately.

Yep - am inclined to sit and wait a bit longer, hoping for bargains towards the end of the summer.

Agreed, good luck.

The traders/shorters hedgers have ramped commodities, now they are creating turmoil and making money in and out to the down and upside, they are the evil part of investing and cause these herd behaviours! elsewhere mm's are marking prices down and so the whole thing goes in waves, down and down until the bulls can get back hold of it, may take a while!

soul* - the green shoots are a result of the cowpats and/or photosynthesis! ...... Meanwhile, the market (and me!) holds its breath ...... Having jumped very first thing, very little is now happening ...... I guess if Wall Street comes in firm, there may well be some follow through, but very nervy times ahead for a while yet.

follow thru is not something many resource punters want tot think about at the moment!!!!

:O

follow through in one respect or another is very likely to be the outcome!

Up down, knowbody knows??