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'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 :-)

in fact, i'm currently working with close stops, so have just shut DOW for +47, but i'll look to get back in later

haven't decided what to do about FTSE which is now just slightly in the money

Well as it stands now I really can't get a feel about the Footsie so will continue to sit on my hands.

closed my FTSE long at just better than b/e ..... there was a respectable profit just a little earlier, but got too greedy

That's a compliment i'm sure i don't deserve cynic ! I'm better at buying large amount of stock for small movement (which is what i mainly concentrate on) .

However anything that you leave overnight in this climate i would definitely have a trailing stop on as i did with DOW the other night and made 38 points rather than wake up to a large deficit which is exactly what i did this morning with the FTSE ,still running that one 150 points to the bad ,my fault..

jimmy - read this ...... http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-01-07/chinese-hedge-funds-face-forced-sales-as-top-manager-plans-exit

strangely, chinese futures are quite well up, but that article sure looks very scary

On the same page worth looking at this ...

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-01-07/global-markets-at-the-beginning-of-a-crisis-george-soros-says

Thu 7 Jan 2016

(ShareCast News) - US jobs data will take centre stage on Friday as the Federal Reserve looks for signs of further recovery in the labour market as it schedules its next interest rate rise.
The non-farm payrolls (NFP) report is expected to show US employers added 200,000 jobs in December, compared to 211,000 in November, while the unemployment rate is forecast to remain at 5%.

Analysts predict average hourly earnings will have risen 2.8% in the year to December following a 2.3% increase a month before.

"Many services industries are adding jobs at a healthy pace," HSBC observed.

"Construction employment has also been growing solidly, reflecting a pick-up in both residential homebuilding and public sector construction this year."

However, other sectors of the economy are not performing as strongly, including manufacturing industries which have been hurt by sluggish global growth and a strong US dollar, while the energy sector has also shed jobs to cope with the oil price slump.

Friday's figures follows the ADP's private payroll report on Wednesday which showed employers added 257,000 jobs in December, beating forecasts of 198,000, after the prior month's 211,000.

The Fed last month decided to raise interest rates for the first time in nearly a decade, as the labour market and economy improved. The central bank looks set to increase rates further this year, provided the recovery continues.

Next week we get the turn around.

next week we get frosty pants so get yr longjohns out......

jimmy - the george soros thing has been around for a while, and he's certainly not one to ignore

perhaps of more immediate interest ....
the chinese have abandoned the circuit-breaker, which is actually good news
thus, there will be a collapse on the market as some positions are forcibly liquidated, but then that will hopefully have lanced the boil

so where does that leave DOW tonight?
i don't know
it has already dropped 375 points - it was down over 400 at start of uk biz today - and the question is whether or not there is a further significant amount to follow

fingers crossed that there'll be at least a sharp and sustained "relief rally" today

Not convinced myself, lets get this week over.

at least slightly less hard to call than the collapses seen in the last week

How long will this rally last ? i didn't have the guts to go long last night with all the news around , however of the stocks picked up yesterday i managed to sell GKN for a 5% profit this morning .

both dow and ftse are having a spot of bother with "round number" resistance
we shall just have to wait and see

Not sure this is a bounce maybe the DOW will tell us later ,not going long on anything here at the moment ..

made a turn on ftse but now out of that
still all twitchy, presumably ahead of NFP though i don't think those will have much effect
iran talking down the crude price to put the squeeze on saudi is also far from helpful