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

test

toya,

re your report on the bugs thread - this seems to be working ok, can you let me know if you see any more problems and we will take a look at this end.

Ian

Edit - I can see the minus posts read, James is taking a look.

Thanks Ian - I noticed this one packed up last night, and has before as I reported last week; but don't know about any others.

Toya,

It is just this thread - James is going to take a look into it for you.

Ian

Thanks Ian,
Toya

Glad you sorted that Toya I was beginning to think it was because I posted the same message 9 times!

I am a little surprised to see no momentum today - I would have thought that the FTSE would have traded up this morning after the strong finish by the dow and support from the Hang Seng etal.

Actually looks like Ftse will slip away this afternoon - but guess that will depend on how the dow opens.

No positions atm

DOW currently looking to open -33.
Banks down today, oil producers up, but no strong direction yet.

Just closed a short for a small gain.

FTSE feels negative with slight correction from Friday, but wanted to close position before DOW opens.

Sidelined now unless we pass 6000.

watch Dow to see if it can hold above 12800 ..... indicator is currently hovering around that mark

12780 & 12750 my lines of support. 780 breached (ish) but trying to recover. Sitting on the sidelines at the moment

Considering shorting the DOW if it gets back to 12780, can't say I'm keen on going long in the face of this downtrend from Friday.

Right on the button, should have taken the trade LoL but watching a Eur/Jpy trade at the same time, so a missed opportunity. Incidentally that came right off a res/sup line in conjunction with a 14 period res on the RSI (10 minute chart).

Can't see any direction in FTSE today, it feels like it wants to go higher, but if in doubt do nowt.

Sidelined today.........unless something changes

Hi all, can someone please explain stamp duty, i thought it only applied to those in the ft100 index.
thanks.

Hi, stamp duty is applied to all shares when you purchase shares in any UK company. I think the percentage is 0.5% of the purchase price, but not applied when you sell the stock.

If you use CFD or Spreadbetting accounts these don't charge stamp duty at all, and an even greater benefit with the SB account is that all gains are tax free, as long as it isn't your main source of income.

Hope this helps.............

DOW is falling now below 12700 level, if this continues then we may see a large down day tommorrow on FTSE sub 6000 on the cards. But still alot can change overnight.

Thanks for that spitfire,i bought peter hambro shares last week and paid 50 stamp duty.Is this company here in the uk or Russia.?

Have a look at the thread titled:
pay no stamp duty on these shares
These companies are exempt, otherwise you pay duty.

They are listed on the UK stock exchange but I believe have a large part of there operation in Russia.