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

for better or worse, i don't use stops any more as they always seem to be wrongly placed :-)
as i'm "protected" by share longs, i'll stay put and clench my buttocks

Weak employment figures may save you this afternoon .

Interesting!

had a limit on 1/2 dow long which was easily hit so had a nice 57 point profit there
balance still running along very jollily

ftse is still out of the money, but not by much

Jammy or what ? did you manipulate the US figures . Could be more downhill from here for a while .

have just cashed in last part of dow for +154
50-odd points off the bottom, but as i was at the gym from 13:00, assuredly no complaints
in fact i see that dow's low was 16,011 which was very close to my original target


a dump by ftse would now finish off quite a reasonable week for me, though i've sure been pretty stupid at times

as i happily admit, i know bugger all, but certainly DOW still looks to be in a bearish pattern with lower highs and lower lows since august on almost any sensible timescale you care to look at

however, as has been abundantly shown, volatility remains exceptionally scary, so if you can get the rhythm right - or even wrong as i have shown! - there's still good money to be made in either direction

The US500 is worth playing for higher stakes alongside DOW .

it's not an index i've ever followed, so i'ld be diving in even more blind

Line it up on your watch alongside DOW it kind of follows .

Iv'e been long DOW from 16151

confess i haven't had time to follow closely today, but i see it's been zipping around like a crazy yoyo
my thought is to short DOW once more at around 16,180 where a small resistance looks to be forming

Closed 16180

Still going up ,don't want to be watching screen in to this evening .

short 16,185.4 :-)
currently looking a bit premature as quick zip up to 16,210 or so

It's all over the place !!

Going blue i think .

like you said, it's all over the place
i'm happy enough to sit tight for quite a while

US rate increase - a view
While it's always important not to over-react to one single data release, we'll make an exception in this case," said Paul Ashworth, chief US economist at Capital Economics.

"The chances of a rate hike by the Fed this year just went way down," he added, saying he expects the central bank will wait until early 2016 for an increase.

Before today's release, Federal Reserve chair Janet Yellen had said policymakers expected a rate rise this year. The Fed meets on 27-28 October and again in December.

============

i am not so convinced, and if it is delayed, the shock when it comes is likely to have a much more vicious impact on the markets

Went long for 47 pts .

i'll continue to sit tight and may add further if we get much north of 16,400 - say 16,450

Bit of luck for me really .
I think we could be up and down over the next week ,however the non farm figures didn't seem to have an affect for more than a couple of hours .