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

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

shorted FTSE first thing at 6321 and am still holding DOW a small short from 16,740

slowly clawing back the thumping losses i realised a few days ago, though had a very good run prior to that

Not sure which way to go now from my personnel view.

No Claret it's hard to see. I am sitting on my hands having closed an o/night Dow short for +104. Will wait for the US later before leaping in again.

It does look as though there is an appetite for further gains at any slight provocation, but it all feels a bit nervous out there somehow....

.

DOW
currently close to but not breaking september high (16,937), and looks to have challenged it a couple of times today
similarly, yesterday it broke through but fell back, and indeed o'night very sharply