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

The big banks in the US reporting on Friday (Wells, JPM, Blackrock etc)....investors hoping for good figures to help the onward march.

DOW
have completely missed the seemingly unending rise here
having looked a couple of times, i have not had the courage to buy in, let alone go long


DAX
i have dabbled quite successfully of late, generally being content to buy on the dips to a certain level, and then cashing out at least part with a respectable though not huge profit


FTSE
this was the laggard for a long time, but has been steadily nudging north
i have a small long which i am happy to hold

Since the beginning of August when the DJIA passed through the 22,000 mark it has added almost 4,000 pts, that's a terrific rise in such a short period of time, some are calling it the melt-up. Be careful out there.

fasten your seatbelts
looks to be a shit day in the offing as DOW suddenly crumbles ...... i don't think any particular news

but a strong recovery towards and after the close ..... equally no apparent reason

US Futures sold off during the night. Apple not helping with production cut for X10

Sell off

Rising bond yields are negative for stocks

DOW
big problems earlier when it dumped comfortably below 26,100
it struggled badly to get back north of that, but as i write, it seems to have managed it ..... check it out at the close

Hopefully a turn around today!!!

DOW
fell back below 26,100 at the close but cash is currently showing comfortably back above that level

No turn around for FTSE today.

FTSE 100 Chart doesn't look good.

/

Looks good now :)

DOW (cash)
showing DOWN 260 at 25,928 ...... not sure that there is any particular true reason, though no doubt some rationalisations - eg interest rates to rise in march

US 10 year treasury yield has broken a multi-decade downtrend.