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

StockMarketWire.com
London equities are seen higher in early deals, following on from positive sessions on Wall St and in Asia as the market continues to focus on Italy's referendum and the just-started Brexit court case.

..............
FTSE 100 : 6732.79 -14.04 (-0.21%) @08:36:47

hahahahahahahah

i am currently not opening any new positions in stocks
just as a dabble, i am may on occasion run an index position, but everything looks far too unpredictable to me

a sipp of course has a much longer view, but obviously even a number of those stocks don't always perform as hoped

Had a cheeky punt on PHTM reporting Friday, other than that watching.

No stopping US Markets.

Quite mad .

thoroughly agree, and exceedingly glad that i have been preoccupied over here and not dabbled as assured would have gone short

Maybe time to go short now cynic.

hi jimmy .... just back from dubai ..... would have agreed with your sentiment but with hindsight, am delighted i was far too preoccupied to do anything

next week with a rate rise in US?

And still the DOW marches on

I was hoping for a Santa Rally on the FTSE......most of my stocks going nowhere at the moment!

Dow 2000 points in a few weeks.

Yes why ??

I got out of my short a while back for a loss , thinking of going short again.

i've opened a small Dow short at 19,892 as i think it's certain that Fed will raise rates ..... however, i'm looking to bank the profit (i hope) b4 the event as this rise has been telegraphed for ages

if Dow clunks after the news, and i'm alert enough, may well then go modestly long

I wouldn't be going long ..

what time is Fed due to announce the rate increase, and more importantly, indications of when future rises might follow?

my guess is 19:00 uk time

Yes, that's right 19:00.

as always, markets are bonkers

i can understand why the markets would be unaffected by the long predicted rise of 1/4%, but with the announcement that there were likely to be a further 3 rises in 2017, one would have thought a sharp reversal would have been a certainty ...... WRONG!!!