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

Mad , 16690 now ..


London's blue-chips are set to suffer further losses early on, according to financial websites, as Chinese stock markets were halted for the second time this week, with the circuit-breaking mechanism kicking in after falling 7% in less than 30 minutes into trading.

Actually I think China was halted after 14 minutes, never happened before.. spooky stuff.

jimmy (et al) - so where now? ....... though i expected this year to be tough and bearish, i don't think anyone could have predicted what we have seen since the new year
though nothing goes down (or up) in a straight line, working out levels of entry are now nigh on impossible

In for a good 12 months of turmoil. Just too much negative news for the markets.

i confess at 22:00 last night i was looking forward to a steady day on the markets, and with some luck, a decent bounce ........ hahahaha!

Not with that nutter in N. Korea.

Debt will be the net big headline in Britain later on in the year, if interest rises come into force. Individuals have an appetite for debt again.

Who knows , as you say nothing goes up or down forever ,i'm not going short now because i probably missed the boat ,i'm more interested in the bounce back .

i agree jimmy, but equally thought that yesterday .... with nothing better to do, i made a nice little turn on dow long during the evening, but sure glad i closed it out!

if you want to be scared, go back to page 1 and have a look at the charts ..... we are still much higher than the september lows

Good point although look at the FTSE different story..

indeed .... the brave man might argue that this is the level for a bounce but i think the 250 chart (MCX) shows differenly

I reckon the Ftse will be in the region of 5950 - 6000 at the year end.

Thats no good D/C we want to know what it's going to do today -):

A few bounces perhaps, only to be short lived.

I think you can see that Stan.

and both dow and ftse falling once more

I will be going long for the mother of bounces and i could be a fool !!

5900 on FTSE doesn't look a bad level

not sure about DOW - just recovered a bit off 16,500 to 16,525

Is Friday the 8th a lucky number in China?
Was watchhing tv the other day{monday!} and a market analyst in Hong Kong was comenting on the sell-off in China over the weekend.
He said to wait until this Friday{8th}/weekend to see a possible 'real' sell-off.
Am out and in {cautious}cash.