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

oh hohoho; how frightfully droll

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now out of ftse but shall leave dow to run

Oh dear is that Fred over here as well ,don't know what he said as like Thatcher used to do with the IRA he doesn't have a voice with me ,he should cheer up it's Christmas ,not spend his life being an angry man ..

just one of his usual silly snipes jimmy

btw, just bought into IHG which looks quite good on the chart and is also a popular t/o target ....... we shall see

all spiffing stuff this morning
premature profit taken in FTSE again, but assuredly no grizzles as long stocks continue north and DOW longs looking tasty

Well my long FTSE caught back up ,shall close that before the session ends.

jimmy - worth flicking back to page 1 where there are charts for a number of indices, all marked up with 25, 50 and 200 dma ........ certainly worth keeping an eye on FTSE 250 and DOW, both of which are now challenging 200 dma ....... FTSE remains woefully short of same, and even 200 points light of early december high (tumbling crude price primarily the culprit i'm sure)

Cheers cynic , i am holding a few trades through xmas but really wanted to be out of indices ,i think the chance of a proper rally this side of xmas is over although today hasn't been bad .

Been out for most of the day, footsie comes good at last I see, along with the Dow up another 1%.. can we get some more gains for the half day tomorrow.

People closing positions for the 3 days including me I suppose, still another 2 1/2 trading days next week for the fts to look forward to.

Just looked at Dow futures and oil. Contemplating going short again reluctantly.

is NY open for biz this afternoon?
i think not

Looking at holiday list, I think both DJ and Nasdq may well be open

Markets open in US. They dont have boxing day as a holiday. China market gone walkabout this morning.

.

for a clearer and certainly interesting view of DOW chart, it's worth going back to post 6

both DOW and FTSE have broken some interesting barriers
in theory, provided DOW breaks north of 17,800 (now 17,700) then it could certainly be heading for 18,000 but no doubt volumes are currently very thin and thus movements exaggerated

How weird am I not seeing something right today as the Dow is up about 1% and ISF (which normally tracks the Fts) is stagnant and both have been like that since the Dow opened?

never heard of ISF but FTSE is certainly well up and up a further 20 since the close to 6320

Yes so I see, strange very strange all the same for ISF not to mirror pretty closely the Index.

Never heard of ISF.. what a heathen -): http://www.moneyam.com/InvestorsRoom/posts.php?tid=6016#lastread

Looks like ISF is back to normal so far today.