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

Any chance of some charts in the header?

DOW futures currently +72. Are you guys expecting the FTSE to follow suit this afternoon?

Harry.

Lehmans is coming out with a statement at 12.30 which will certainly shape the mkts one way or t'other. Will be very volatile just after.

I think furtures are only up on blind hope of good news, rather than expectation. Last roll of the dice? If you can't sustain a rally on the back of probably the biggest financial bail out in history (Mae and Mac), what hope do you have? Eventually the herd will decide to take the path of least resistance. e.g. If you can't push it up, then might as well let it fall.

In my opinion.

Strawbs.

Is the following superceded then?:
Lehman will report third-quarter financial results today at about 7:30 a.m. in New York, a week earlier than planned. ``In these periods of unprecedented volatility every word by banks or financial institutions is going to be scrutinized,''
EDIT: Ignore! Just realised time difference! Brain not in gear.

The way the FTSe and the US futures are behaving looks like they are expecting something positive out of Lehman. Might be something decent to sell into to

So, Lehman rose in early New York trading after posting a $3.9 billion third-quarter loss on $5.6 billion of writedowns.
No one seems to know if that is good or bad!!! Even DOW futures went from +72 down to zero & are now +32. Headless chicken springs to mind.

Market wanted some sort of deal to guarantee it's future which it didn't get but apparently the analysts call gave some reassurance, hence the drop then rise.

and now less than decided ..... Dow currently refuses to stay above 11300 but could go either way

Gold is sitting on 760 support line right now could be worth a speculative buywith reasonably tight stop loss. In fact oil at 100 dollars euro dollar and cable are also on key support levels at the moment.Will the dollar batter them all into submission?

Hi All,

I was thinking of looking at SB's or CFD's again as a way of shorting/longing the indices. Can anyone recommend a provider with low minimum stake sizes. Last time I looked they were mostly around 3. Ideally I'd like something lower, maybe 50p or 1. I know that's probably not very adventerous, but my investing style is generally to track the trend over a longish period, so I'd prefer to bet/risk small amounts to avoid being stopped out too quickly. If that makes sense.

Thanks.

Strawbs.

Strawbs,

Why bother with SB's or CFD's, have you considered using db X trackers FTSE Short ETF. (XUKS) as far as shorting is concerned?

Strawbs.

www.capitalspreads.com do 1 a point on Indices.

Thanks Keaydian.

Thanks Stan,

Yes I have some XUKS, but they seem to be 1 point moved for every 5 in the FTSE. Just thinking it might be more efficient to short via CFD/SB rather than an ETF.

Strawbs.

Agree XUKS doesn't quite work as well as ISF in terms of acuracy in reverse, volume no where near as ISF yet of course.

Strawbs gft do 1point spreads on ftse and 2 point on dow during trading hours min 1 stake

Stan,

Yeah. Handy for us "non leveraged" types as a way to make some kind of profit in a falling market. I've noticed the bid/ask can jump around wildly though, so probably not as accurate to exit/enter as I assume a SB/CFD is.



Thanks Falcothou.

I'll take a look.

Strawbs.

Interesting yesterday how rumours circulate, before Lehman released results yesterday, I kept reading reports suggesting they had secured funding from the far east. But I couldn't find out any more, then when results were released all they said was that they were still looking for investors. They now look dead in the water, and awaiting a asset sell off.

So still favouring the short side, but will wait to sell into strength today.

Strawbs, as regards to the spread on XUKS the lowest that I have seen is 8p between buy and sell.