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

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.

if friday 8th is a lucky day, why is this chap predicting a "real sell-off" that day?

Dont know if he is short. Only saw the top half of him on my screen :-)

At what point would you go long cynic ,if at all ??

PS i'm more likely to play FTSE than DOW myself.

The £ has been weakening recently I hope it's not self-feeding.
2517

prob a side effect of $ strengthening, though certainly £/€ is currently only 1.34 whereas it was 1.41 not so long ago

Talking of Friday, don't forget its Non Farm Payrolls tomorrow as well.

i'm sure they'll be strong thus giving further excuse for markets to slump for fear of another imminent rate rise

I don't have a feeling as to which way the footsie is going over the next 2 days so happy to be mainly in cash, that may change of course.

there's clearly some quite brave people about as DOW continues its modest revival - it's now down ONLY 330 (16,575) against earlier low of -420

So stop doing a Fred and answer my question :)

If you think this market is haphazard, wait until the date of the referendum in or out,
and then the result.

-=-==-

Also, watch the value of £ tumble, if the vote is for out.

-=-===

Look at the future.

sorry jimmy but never saw your question

confess i'm not sure at all, but as i'm in front of the screen all today, i'm just watching and waiting to see how DOW reacts ....... in a silly way, it's currently looking fairly stable but still a little below 16,700

FTSE is more difficult i think because of its weighting and the still collapsing oil price
at 5950 it technically has about 100 points headroom before it runs into a serious hurdle

No problem , i went long FTSE out now with 35 points ,however i'm still holding one from 6100 so best part of 150 points down .
Been bottom fishing (or so i hope) stocks today .

Chinese markets. Friday 8th
The 5% or higher shareholders cannot sell until January 8th.
The ban lifts on Friday but people are selling ahead of the selloff in order to lock in profits. Friday trading should prove to be quite interesting.
It looks as if January 8th will take a bigger hit in Chinese markets.

i went in/out DOW just after open for +25, and just re-opened at 16,698, but all pretty scary still

quite tempted by FTSE but i've done nothing yet

that's o'night tonight of course ....... now that is frightening

Sweaty pants time.
Or just let it go, and wait till morning.

depends if you can watch the screen

jimmy's really good at reading the markets - FTSE in particular - and i have followed him in at 5947
unless i act b4hand, i'll either close it out when DOW shuts, or leave it with a trailing stop or somesuch

DOW long is now nicely in the money from 16,698 and as it was such a small postion, i'm considering enlarging it

perhaps that's all a bit greedy :-)