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
a tricky call now, with cash up about 300 points since the close for the long w/e in USA

i was a bit o'exposed on Dow (long) and with hindsight was too cautious in banking some of those profits, but better in my pocket than potentially frittering it all away again

i have another small position on which i have placed a limit at 16,460 and another which is too far out to worry about for now, though very happy to see the loss it was carrying diminish very substantially :-)

all fun and games today
just managed to squeeze out a little 25 point (long) profit, but only after there had been a scare south

made another small turn, but far too quickly - he said with 20/20 hindsight!
still, i have a couple of other dow longs running, though they're currently out of the money, but a lot less so than they were 20 minutes ago :-)

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would very much like to see ftse close back above 6200 but it still has about 25 points to go

after a bit of a gloomy friday i am very pleasantly surprised to see FTSE having another dart at 6200
whether it can breach and hold is another matter

FTSE looking interesting currently 6084

bought a bit prematurely at 6100, but i hope won't prove to have been too rash

.

Heading towards 6000 again .

or even a tad lower
however, my gut feeling - not necessarily correct - is that thursday will see no change in interest rates in usa, and thus are big surge, sustained or not
and if there is a very small rise, is that not effectively already discounted?

Last time it went under 6000 we had a 350 point bounce .

On it's way back got down as low as 6017 all depends on the DOW as well this afternoon i suppose .

FTSE has really struggled today but has at last limped back north of 6100
it would be nice to have a good blue day on both sides of the pond

too ambitious for today i'm sure, but ideally DOW needs to climb above 16,500 and, in due course, FTSE above 6,200

16,500 has proved pretty stubborn of late but with this early surge, there's just a chance that it will follow through and bust out

woohoo!
never expected a GOOD day like today ...... glad i already had a couple of longs already in place, even though they've been a bit scary of late

cashed in half Dow for +100 but have left all FTSE running as i'm pretty confident that that will whizz at least first thing tomorrow

I couldn't be by my screen after 1 pm so couldn't play , annoying as i was going long FTSE ,should have gone long earlier at 6050. Got a couple of stocks running long though which is more my thing .

i have "hold" stocks, but have been trading Dow and FTSE to a lesser extent almost exclusively ...... i've been quite disciplined and not thrown big money at it, but it can still be quite scary

not unexpectedly, FTSE 6,200 has proved to be a hurdle, though it was breached for a couple of minutes about 15 minutes ago
managed to sell 1/2 FTSE long just below that as level was dropping for +96 ..... a nice start to the day :-)

Doesn't want to go through that 6200 does it and now falling away.