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 6330 for 20 points, that will do for me for today, off to play golf now lets hope it goes as well as the trade. The way I have been playing recently it would make a nice change.

Good luck to anyone trading today.

Looks like Nick Hasels's column last weekend was right in foreseeing a 6% retracement in miners

not much blue anywhere, BOR being a friendly exception

Nasty day all round took a few profits here and there but with the oil companies it is weird : oil at an all time high and will keep on going up to $140 possibly and then you have the pullbacks followed by sharp rises....job to follow them all and keep in touch...cheers !.

U.K. Stocks Drop, Led by BHP Billiton, Rio Tinto; ICAP Retreats
By Sarah Jones

May 20 (Bloomberg) -- U.K. stocks tumbled the most in two months, led by commodity producers after Morgan Stanley said investors should ``take profits.'' BHP Billiton Ltd., the world's largest mining company, and Rio Tinto Group retreated.

Had a look at copper and a few other metals and don't seem to be down much so miners don't look they are about to fall off a cliff yet. Oil stocks unlucky to collapse without crude doing so mind you since when has any logic worked on the markets

As ftse has fallen further than other indices, even allowing for Mondays gain against other indices, I would hope to see a bounce today. So long @ 6215.

Brave man Spit, given the following:
BoE minutes to May interest rate meeting today(0930 BST).

yes we have a raft of economic news at 09:30 for UK

so the plan was to close trade at 09:15, which I have at 6236 for 21 points, mustn't be greedy.

of considerable concern to see Dow 12680/12700 broken ..... poise needs to be recovered quickly if there is not to be yet more blood-letting

No position just yet, would be inclined to short ftse but it's not a certain entry at this time. Worth looking at asx overnight which rallied after a early sell off to finnish 0.1% down, and nikki finnish up.

Funny how things change, looked like an obvious short after dow closed, but borderline now.

market looks remarkably sanguine when downright bloody could have been reasonably expected

decision made - no trade, ftse looks strong today and I certainly dont fancy a long, will have to wait until Monday as I'm out tomorrow.

US has a long weekend. Can't see it improving with oil getting ever higher. Noticed that Brent has nearly caught up with US light.

Tried an arbitrage strategy on oil this morning due to convergence in price of brent and us crude. Went long us/ short brent hoping for a divergence of the more customary 1.5 dollars. This seems a less risky strategy in a way than betting on oil going up and down as it's market neutral and will hopefully pan out unless I've missed some new fundamental change in brent vs. crude, anyway hope to make 100 points after spreads, got til the end of expiry!

When I looked at Sky business news last night, Brent was shown as higher than US light, I have never seen this before.

Good plan Falcothou and good luck............

Cynic

Thought you may be interested in some comments I have copied from another BB, which confirms your opinion on China. It also re-afirms my belief that the Chinese economy will slow down later this year.

Quote =

"A friend of mine is currently working for IBM in China and has just been to a talk by an eminent professor of accounting on the Chinese boom.

Of course (as you would suspect), he is all doom and gloom screaming sell China, but what I found interesting was his take on Chinese accounting.

His proposition is that the accounting standards are so bad across most of corporate China that reported profit is simply miles and miles off reality. Companies on price earnings of 20 to 30 are really sat at multiples in the hundreds and primed for massive falls.

It's an interesting situation and one that you could easily envisage. Do we really think developing China is applying the same accounting standards as the rest of the western world (when even they are not that good).

I wonder how soon it'll unwind? These things tend to come in an avalanche a la Worldcom and Enron. Maybe that snowball could smash it's way onto the scene over the summer.....maybe....., and that could be just as the Dow kisses 10,000 for the first time since April 2005 "

nice to see that some others have seen the reality of chinesse accounting (and mores), though i do not see armageddon as nigh.

just for the record, i took the plunge late friday and went long Dow (had been stopped out earlier) at 12485 on the basis that (a) there is support at this sort of level and (b) a bounce is overdue and (c) friday's fall was on very low volume, most likely caused by many squaring their positions aheand of long w/e

Quite a good read this weekend http://market-ticker.denninger.net/

I have taken a small short on the FTSE at 6125