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

Amazing! They were -40 first thing this morning.
Mining stock in favour today. There seems to be a cycle of sectors being heavily traded. One day miners, then financials, then house builders. Maybe easier than trading the indices at the moment.

Today both the banks and the miners have gone up.
That's confused me!

:o) Barratt Dev also gone up which means the whole lot up today, but over the last few weeks the sectors have been separate.

but the following does not presage good news .....

Drugmaker Merck (MRK, Fortune 500) pushed back its earnings report until after the market close. The drugmaker said it wanted to publish its report after research notes for a study of cholesterol medicine Simvastatin are released.

Analysts expect to Merck to report earnings of 83 cents per share on revenue of $6.05 billion, according to a Thomson Financial poll.

Now DOW stock futures +19.
Cashed in my mining stocks at a small profit & now waiting for the next oversold sector!

What a bloody nightmare market!

Shares go up, then down, up then stand on their head.
The only thing they don't do is turn themselves inside out .... yet!

How are you meant to trade the market like this?

Answers on a postcard to ...

DOW looking grim again. Currently -94.
Most house builders down today, so a possible bounce on the cards in that sector.

I think the knee-jerk reaction after hours on Dow, primarily due to weak forecast by Apple despite first rate numbers, will be shown to be overdone ..... if you read (www.cnnfn.com) you will note they have some new stuff in the pipeline to be launched within the next few months

...... we're busy finishing several more wonderful new products to launch in the coming months

An interesting read, but he also said
".......Apple's CFO, said on a conference call with analysts that the company's profit margins will be pressured in part by a "future product transition" that he said he was not at liberty to discuss at the present time."
The other thing which I think may be a worry is that they are pinning their hopes on the new iphone 3G. I may be wrong, but I thought that the 3G takeup in Europe was very low due to the comparative cost to normal networks. Maybe in the U.S. 3G is successful. Admittedly Apple have a very faithful customer base, which is a point in their favour.

I think Apple is a great company with excellent products but they are consumer discretionary items and generally priced at a premium to competition. They have been selling vast amounts of their new phone though at a reduced margin

http://market-ticker.denninger.net/ mention of apple and naked shorting on here today

Naked shorting: "An investor agrees to sell shares without having borrowed them first. This encourages hedge funds to sell shares & then rush to buy them again."
They are thinking of outlawing this practise for financial institutions. Maybe they should ban it altogether! Just mho.

would certainly ban most traders from rushing around naked!
meanwhile, looks as though we shall be in for a juicy day in london tomorrow with a really strong performance in NY and Dow finishing at day's high.
5450 is the resistance to break (i hope)

first part was an easy call, though have banked my indices profits while waiting to see if either/and/or Dow and FTSE can maintain upward momentum.

Worth a look at Alex today
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?menuId=242&menuItemId=-1&view=SUMMARY&grid=F2&siteId=1&targetRule=2

http://market-ticker.denninger.net/
They are going to nationalise freddie an Fannie.
Just been reading Bubbles and how to avoid them, wish I read it last July.
From Kahn..in a bear market the mood changes from 'It's ok to buy the dips' to 'better get out on the next bounce' to get me out now at any price' ultimately ending in 'revulsion'

This has the feel of another bear market rally to me, with Vodafone issuing a mild profit warning, it looks like a sign of things to come. I don't like to see companies having knee jerk re-action to the sp, by saying they will buy back 1bn worth of shares because they are undervalued.

The key point is when banks report interims at the end of the month. I would love to see a return to a more normal market, and go back to stock selection, rather than trade the indices. Unfortunately I can't see this happening for a good while yet.

I always thought share buy backs were a waste of money e.g Alliance and Leicester doing it at 7-8 pounds a few months ago. Dow has needed oil to drop to rally so people have been bailing out of commodity etfs which have dragged other commods down for the ride. Ftse would be a lot higher in this rally if it wasn't so resource based. Difficult to call a top

Share buy backs are a waste of money, they are often used to help hit EPS targets which are linked to the directors bonus.

What ARE you suggesting spitfire43, surely directors wouldn't embark on a means of enhancing THEIR remuneration and at the same time promote it as good for shareholders ? My! MY!
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