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

trade off between interest rates going up within 2/3 months and now arguably not

Positive start to the week.

my index shorts are clearly (un)comfortably on the "wrong side", but fortunately easily outweighed by my stock longs ..... i'll stay put :-)

the following is quite possibly why the markets are so strong today ......

TPP trade talks on the cusp of a deal
The US, Japan and 10 other Pacific Rim economies are closing in on an agreement to strike the largest trade pact seen anywhere in two decades, in what would be a huge strategic and political win for US President Barack Obama and Japan’s Shinzo Abe.

The Trans-Pacific Partnership covers some 40 per cent of the global economy and will create a new Pacific economic bloc with reduced trade barriers relating to the flow of everything from beef and dairy products to textiles and data as well as new standards and rules for investment, the environment and labour.

You must be getting hammered unless you stopped out by now cynic ..

getting hammered so am now very undecided as to whether the market is indeed overbought and will pull back sharply, or if it will keep galloping away
bollocks but such is life
shouldn't have tried to be such a smartarse

somewhat strangely, but overall i am actually only slightly down on where i finished on friday

That is why i use stops ,hate doing it but the one time i didn't recently i got trounced on AFR .

with things like indices, it's very difficult to make a judgment on whether or not to use stops ...... there's for and agin
for better or worse CFDs do not have time constraints so there is not that pressure

Of course it's not , if we go on a bull run before you know it the DOW could be 17500 and FTSE 6800 ,you'll wish you had stops in place then .

i have bitten the bullet .... much safer :-)
probably should have done so earlier, or better still, have gone long instead of short ..... great stuff hindsight :-)

per DOW chart below, we have just romped up through 25 dma, but still miles short of 50 let alone 200 dma

per below, FTSE is now just nudging through 50 dma

a very interesting afternoon in prospect
wall street looking to open in positive territory and more or less sat on a resiatance, so it's then a question of whether those levels can be held or whether the sellers will ultimately hold sway

16,780/16,800 causing some problems that need to be o'come if further upside potential to be realised
there was a very quick whizz up to 16,860 but that only lasted a few minutes

though critical levels held by both ftse and dow, i would be surprised if the markets did not take at least a breather today or even for a day or two

both indices now pulling back from levels that have been much higher

DOW
watch for 16,860 to support or fail

Think you mean 16,860 , but that's gone anyway .

there you are .... cleaned up the party now :-)

and yes, indeed so ..... am short dow from 16,796 and that assuredly got a bit scary and ftse from 6371
certainly wasn't brave enough to keep adding and adding, for as you said the other day, these things can really run away with your wallet

now need to work out where to cash in, hopefully with a nice or even juicy profit

Been in KAZ and GLEN the last few days both risen about 70% ,although still hold some KAZ from higher up .
Have covered my stonking loss on Afren with these two .

cashed in FTSE for +50, so that'll pay for dinner :-)

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DOW
16,780 is likely to prove a more stubborn (for me) support, as it was quite a hurdle on the way up