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

closed short for 31 points, looks like you're lucky too.

may look later for another entry.

Yep - just closed at 6195

looks like it will continue to fall so back in @ 6190

.and out at 6175

Gone long at 6180

Ftse pausing - waiting to decide which way to go ??

out at 6190 - short again at 6190 - this might just be pushing my luck

I'm feeling dizzy looking at those trades, nice bit of scalping.

Going to be boring and will trade again Monday if my indicators are indicating, if you follow my meaning.

Might be possible that the support at 12800 which gave up the ghost this morning might now be resistance, wait and see :)

Well done BHunt I managed to get out of one of my shorts, still the very very short one to go. At least it's heading in the right direction now but for how long?

Quite a good rhetoric re oil on
http://market-ticker.denninger.net/

West I. Texas oil up to $126 and Brent $124....no stopping it at the moment.....something the world can't live without until hydrogen gets going !

This is getting to the stage where the oil price could start to climb in blocks of $5 a go, not just $1 at a time !

Excellent reading Falcothou thanks

My short above still under water - dont know whether to hold it over the weekend - or take the small loss? Decisions, decisions.

About 6.30 bst there was a spike on the Dow of about 100 points - just for a few seconds - and shown on the graph. Does this happen often ? - and would it have taken me out if I had been short on the dow?

Seems a tad strange - almost something done on purpose to take traders out - if thats possible ?

If it happened for real, yes, it would have taken you out. However if it was a momentary spike then more likely to have been a feed problem. Still would have taken you out though and then you would have to contact your broker to have the trade reinstated, has happened to me a few times.

Watched bloomberg at the close this eve and it seemed bearish which is unusual of late. AIG down 8.7% on hedge fund returns down 85% and Citigroup flogging 400bn of assets. Lots of talk re oil of course though energy stocks were supposedly down due to increased political risk and possible demand destruction e.g. people parking up cars, airlines throwing off anything that weighs anything to save fuel! oil supposedly up on dollar weakness re. yen and euro. US trade deficit dropped due to decrease in imports and a weaker dollar helping exports particularly US equipment to harvest natural resources. They are forecasting growth of 0.1%. After hours FEDEX was cutting forecasts as being highly affected by oil prices which . Generally volume still weak and retailers reporting next week. Bottom line seems to be that oil needs to fall back to 100 to get economy firing again

Thanks PT

I decided to leave my short on FTSE open over week end with a reasonably tight SL

Cynic...you have a doppelganger called Ultimate Cynic....I'm not sure who's who anymore !