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

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.

Stan,

Yep. Sounds about right. Although I'm sure I've seen it as low as 2 points, and as high as 40 points (assuming stockwatch was working OK at the time of course :-) ).

Strawbs.

Spitfire have you read this one passes comment on yesterday's shennaigans

Falcothou

I'm not sure what you mean, should there be a link on your post.

Strawbs,
You may have seen some correspondence in Shares Mag. over the past 3 weeks in the letters page regarding XUKS's movements. Not seen 2p though..I will have to watch a bit closer -):

Stan,

No. Didn't see the article. I only buy a copy these days if I can see a few articles of interest. Did they have an explanation?

Strawbs.

Strawbs,
After a fashion, in a "management talk" sort of way -):

Ahhh. One of those explanations.... :-)

Strawbs.

Volume but not a lot of content -):

Sorry spitfire forgot the link
http://market-ticker.denninger.net/

These markets are soooo evil. I've never seen so many changes of direction!

Up down, up down, all we need now is to shake it all around...

Bears and Bulls doing battle. Guess you have to pick a side and stick with it until it breaks in a clear direction. In my opinion......

Strawbs

Thanks for the link, I think he has got his point across, not a happy chap and correct not to be.

But he should be a very rich chappy, I hope he shorted all of those banks shares, when he saw this coming in April 2007.

The system I use was indicating that I should have gone long at 5379 ten minutes ago, but I just don't trust this rally, Lets see if I was right to ignore ?

I'm getting a long signal as well.

i am very mistrustful of Dow as the late surge was based on the story that Lehman was in t/o talks ...... sort of "so what?" even if true, for the underlying problems remain

Even if Lehman is resolved, there are others that may follow. See below........

Washington Mutual Inc was downgraded to below investment-grade status by Moody's Investors Service, after the largest U.S. savings and loan projected a $4.5 billion third-quarter increase in reserves for bad loans but said it has more than enough capital.

Moody's cut the Seattle-based thrift's senior unsecured debt rating two notches to "Ba2," its second-highest "junk" grade, from "Baa3," with a "negative" outlook. It also lowered its rating for the banking unit to "Baa3" from "Baa2."

"Washington Mutual's access to the debt and equity markets remains severely constrained," Craig Emrick, a Moody's senior credit officer, said in an interview.

He added, though, that "there are no significant ratings triggers from a downgrade like this, because Washington Mutual is not reliant on wholesale short-term funding."

This week's Share Mag, Simon Griffin urges caution of being sucked in to a DOW bounce. Although his analysis is purely charting, he predicts the bear channel to slide to 10628. The only unknown is the effect of the U.S. presidential election in november.