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

Hope you had a good xmas cynic , ,i'm short DOW again and i'm staying in .

as always .... you too old fruit :-)

DOW at 19,850 (currently) is on a potential tipping point
keep watching!

make of the NFP numbers what you will ......

US adds 156,000 jobs in December
US job growth slowed slightly in December but was revised higher for the previous month while the unemployment rate remained at less than half of the Great Recession peak, suggesting President Barack Obama will pass on a robust labour market to Donald Trump.
The country tacked on 156,000 jobs last month, missing Wall Street expectations of 175,000, the Labor Department said in the final employment report before the inauguration. However, the November figure was revised higher to 204,000 from 178,000

DOW
now retreated to its tipping point once more at 19,850

If's but's and maybe's followed by if's but's and maybe's from gun nuttier land again as usual, better to wait for their mid-week re-interpretation before doing very much on the trading front this side of the W/E me thinks.

DOW was one point short of the 20k tonight then .

High
Dow Jones Industrial Average 19963.80 64.51 0.32 19999.15 19836.25 19907.00 19963.80

.

GOLD
closed in london at $1183 .... if that holds o'night, then pms should have a nice little surge in the morning

Look at the bandwidth on he ftse chart. Worth noting also ftse100 p/e value not far off 40 now.

7281 ftse100 short with 'shortie'

good grief!
what's suddenly happened other than trump opening his gob?
a couple of minutes ago both dax and dow were up 80+ and now they've lost all that an a bit more

Would you trust Trump even if he was in front of you?

I would think many in the states are wondering and quaking in their shoes about their future.

-=-==-==

I quite like Trump, least you know where you are with him. The man's a pure capitalist and the markets have taken taken to him looking at the numbers.

Have just doubled down my short @ 7300...

See what happens overnight shortie, to my mind pointless trying to pick a top. When it does eventually go tits up it will be brutal. Good luck with your short. Didn't think for one minute you had defected to ADVFN by the way :0)

I'm keeping a DOW short open because as you say Chris it will come off big when it happens , i am rather surprised that with all the controversy surrounding Trump right now that it has not wobbled yet .

was out to dinner last night, but the markets (dow) look to have been all over the place, and perhaps similarly o'night

overall, it's clear that trump hardly came across as presidential, and though that is windowdressing to some extent, it does the image of usa no good at all

it could be regarded as a reflection of the above that gold has rocketed once more and has blasted straight through the $1200 barrier

Whilst I'm shorting FTSE the DOW I believe has further upside before any fall. As for picking a top Chris I'm a little more scientific well I like to think anyway! I use Ichimoku clouds to make plays, whilst the FTSE still shows further upside potential it's run its range and needs to find support so I'm shorting to where ever support maybe.