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

DOW now looking pretty nasty and has sunk below important 16,000 level

now down to 15,800 and trying to fall further ..... ftse will open pretty bloody in the morning (cash currently -145) unless china very strong
wonder what brought on this very hefty profit-taking or worse

The Cat was dead when it bounced!

Finished well down ,took FTSE and DAX with it .Took 127pts on a short ,bit easy really just wouldn't stop going down from 8 PM .

I think it's simply called uncertainty cynic. It's the one thing nobody likes and it's always going to be magnified under the market lens. After all, we are actually unable to predict the future with any degree of accuracy at all, we simply rely on probability based solely on historical performance.

That's funny , bloody good bounce today for a dead cat though !!!

Good call Chris, you old Toffee you, and you jimmy b!
At the end of the day, we short term traders depend, nay thrive, on this sort of volatility. It's a day-trader's dream! :-)

Good to see you back splat :O)

Cheers . Anything to do with indicies and me is luck ,mostly bad :)

Blimey, the thread's been taken over by Mickey Mousers!

Oi!! I prefer the rather less derogatory term "bin dippers" hils.

Tough going keeping tabs on all the swings.

you can't! ..... all you can do is to try to trade what you see, stay glued to the screen and hope you get the rhythm right

anyway, good to see ftse has clawed it's way back above 6,000 but 6070 remains the next major hurdle

Screen watching's as dull as dishwater, Cyners.

Sounds like you need one of them automagicals to do the trading for you. You'd be able to get out a bit more then. :o)

all too clever for me ...... i'll stick to quill and parchment :-)


meanwhile, be thankful for a relatively ho-hum day

The market's driven by algorithms, Cyners. They're fast, they're slick, and one rather large, well known bank went so far as to dig up half of Wall Street so they could lay their own fiber optic cabling straight to their servers right alongside the exchange's servers, and get in and out of the market ahead of the competition.

You ain't ever gonna beat them, so you may as well join them.

:o)

That's going to cost cynic a fortune laying fiber optics from his place to Wall St .

He'll have to double his tenant's rent then James. :o)

I might chip in half with him if the trades are that good .

i'm not sure which is worse, my golf or my trading, but thank goodness i don't have to make a living from either :-)