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

I notice that they are doing a bail-out binary yes/no!

no idea ..... don't understand binaries and have no wish to!

US employment figures must be no worse than expected as Dow indicators have just jumped back up from only +20 to +65 and climbing.

will post from cnnfn.com as soon as they appear there

non farm payroll down 159000
largest drop since 2003

unemployment rate 6.1%, the same

wrong .... 105,000 expected, so guess the view is that this will further force the lower house to pass bailout bill

Economy shed jobs for the 9th straight month in September - down a massive 159,000. Unemployment holds at 6.1%. More soon.

Probably to help get the bill through

US futures up presumably because it will help to get the bailout thr' + emergency fed cut now expected

Ig's binary seems to be showing 80% likelihood of yes

sounds about right to me ..... probably better than that but brave to call it

I've got to stop going out in the afternoon's. The ftse just feverishly plays with itself all morning and then the dow dominatrix swans in post 2:30 and dishes out the orders!

dow interesting to play at the moment ..... typically and perversely fell quite sharply after the positive vote (lol), but then zipped up, and back again and now limping back up

frankly, if dow finishes up only a smidge, i don't care, as the catastrophe had the bill not been passed was too horrible to contemplate .... yes, i know this bailout actually solves little or nothing, but at the very least, it should bring some much needed stability

Big bounce on the FTSE on monday, followed by profit taking......Hopefully!

Well Dow just hit 10400 imagine if they hadn.t passed it would have hit minus figures

Evidently a case of buy on the rumour sell on the fact which I didn't do...

Dow stands this morning (Saturday) at 10333, reflecting a fall of about 500 points from its high yesterday evening prior to the vote ...... all very strange, with the index now below where it was after the bill was thrown out on Monday!

My guess, and I hope it is not just wishful thinking, is that the fall primarily reflects profit taking and just a general clearout while peeps and analysts assess the implications of last week's momentous roller-coaster ...... that being so, a sharp bounce on Monday might be expected .... indeed, chart followers would say that it is badly needed as 10400 is seen as an important support.

Of course the passage of the bill does not remotely cure all ills ..... in fact, it probably solves few directly, but it should provide some stability, which is exactly what the financial markets need to allow confidence to slowly return, and with it, the freeing up of inter-bank lending.

Meanwhile, if it were not so serious it would be farcical, I hear that Iceland's 3 big banks have debts of 9x that country's GDP!

Soon the DOW will drop below the 'magic' 10,000

then the S will really htf

Seems like a lot of respected people think otherwise though Antony Bolton, Warren Buffett Simon Thompson to name 3 all seem to expect an October election bounce. I would have thought it would have to be seen that this rescue package wasn't working before such a big drop and another US cut not out of the question. May be even the ECB as well! Could be a sub 10,000 false break out. 3 trillion dollars waiting in the sidelines looking for an entry according to market ticker

certainly a drop below 10,000 is not out of the question, but beyond question is that no one but no one has any idea how the markets are even going to react over the next week, let alone over even a slightly longer period.

for sure there are still some nasties to come out of the closet - the latest being the collapse of the Hypo Bank rescue in Germany and the lurking problems in Iceland - but i would hazard a guess that the worst will be over by the end of the year, and some slight shoots of recovery appearing by early Q2 2009, and that is really not that far away

Bailout: Will it work? .......... Experts differ on whether the $700 billion bailout plan will prompt banks to lend and help the economy. But even if it does, it will take time.

the above is the headline on an article on cnnfn.com .... it's worth reading for a balanced view