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 program last night on BBC4 about the credit crunch. Looks like the investment fund & hedge fund traders, having become very rich selling packaged sub-prime investments globally, are now set to become even richer buying up companies whose valuations are rock bottom. Just us little guys left to pick up the fallout!!!

Hmmm. Just like the Fed announcement last night. Quick rally then fall out of bed again! Rather underlines the "one track mind" state of the market (or it's participants) at the moment. Probably the one thing Bernanke and Co. haven't learnt from the history of the great depression, it's not the policy response.....it's the publics one.

In my opinion.

Strawbs.

Agree, however it cant keep dropping 500 points everyday. and we all know there are a host of good little companies out there still going about their business as usual and yet only valued a fifth of what they were a year ago... The reason i'm backing the positions is because the companies (mainly CEY and CRA) both have plenty of cash and, well, lets face it CEY to become a producer soon sitting on mountains of gold (literally) and CRA about to announce a tie up with a global service supply leader, i'm certain if i keep adding the story will be far different in six months time, these are just two companies, but hell, there are now hundreds of fantastic bargains out there with hideously low forward PE's, that the market cant keep pushing down forever - the knack is making sure they are cash rich, from this post it appears i believe we must be approaching some kind of floor, maybe a bit of pain, but i think (as highlighted above) there are masses of funds waiting to snap up the bargains...

Just as a matter of interest, where do these companies keep their cash?
Presumably lodged with banks, but unlike us private investors, with no guarantee?

9000 here we come! sheer madness, its now talk of recession pushing the Dow down. I presume 9000 (round number) is some kind of support??? or are we going to plunge through that and carry on to low 8,000's??? utter b*ll*cks, i'm a bit worried that the world is going to implode and shatter into trillions of little pieces, i was quite enjoying life too!!!

Well ! I don't know about you lot but I have lost a packet on this absurd overdone downturn !.

Just had a conversation with a good friend of mine who retired at an early age having made his money on the stock market in his younger years, we are both in agreeance, the bottom is here (or very near), its the fear factor out there, everyone sees doom and gloom, i see opertunities, it takes unbelievable mental strength to do the opposite of trend, but you really do have to buck the trend and add companies you believe in at low levels and sell when everything looking overbought...

i suspect a low on ftse.today.
looking for a reasonable bounce from here.
if it takes out todays low and holds stock up and head for the mountains.
could be wrong of course.
just my opinion as always.
regards
jkd

BT
our posts crossed but it seems we are in agreement, although im not sure this is the final low.
best regards to you.
jkd

CNN experts(?) reckon the $700bn bail out package will not have any effect for another 2 weeks, so possibly further down to go until then.

In all fairness, the problems wont stop until the US housing market stabilises, however the market has become oversold on just about every indicator, and i also think when we start getting close to new year the market has to start looking towards 2010, add to that, the election and i think we have strong upside potential...

global rate cut just announced

We're in business guys, Market shot up last few minutes...

Lets see how pessamistic the markets really are......

Will they buy the rally or continue to sell it?

Strawbs.

DOW futures now +152. What a turnaround!

... and now down 160... now, where did i leave that noose...?!

FWIW I believe we're near (200-300 points) the bottom and this morning added SBRY @268p to the BT.A I bought last week @257p (ok I'm shy a few p on BT.A) Anyone looking 2-3 years out will benefit from purchases made @ these levels in blue chip co's, imo.
2517

I agree. Now is probably the time to start thinking about core holdings for the future. Utilities seem to have held up quite well, though unexciting. Div yield should be maintained, though OFWAT inspection coming out in 2009, I believe.

An extract from Mike Swanson...

Yesterday once again the stock market fell - this time going through the lows set on Monday. There is still no sign of a bottom. Despite Tuesday's drop the VIX only went up a point while the put/call ratio actually closed down - in other words despite the market drop a lot of players in the options market were trying to bet on a bottom. This is a bad sign, because at bottoms you see people buying puts in mass as insurance against further declines.

We also did not see the increase in volume that I'm looking for to spot a bottom. Again let's look back at the charts I showed you yesterday, because they are so critical

This is the market bottom that came after the September 11th Bin Laden attack. Notice how when the market bottomed volume picked up into the final bottom. That has not happened yet.


The same thing happened at the bear market of 2002. I consider the current market environment very similar to what happened during this bottom. The selling became intense and as you can see the market fell a lot over eight weeks. As the market reached a bottom it fell hard on huge volume for four days.

We have not seen selling like this yet in this market - but I think it is coming. It would have started today if the central banks hadn't cut, but now it will start in a few days or a few weeks - depending on how long this government created bounce can last. I basically am expecting several high volume 3-5% down days in the market to bring us a bottom or one huge crash type day to bring a bottom to the current market and until I see that I will not be convinced we have seen a real bottom.







Earlier this morning the DOW futures were down over 200 points on the back of huge sell-offs in Asia and Europe. The Japanese Nikkei fell 9.40% while the European indices were down 4-5%. Everyday it seems we get another bailout plan or government intervention. Today it is the UK government which announced a plan to invest taxpayers' money directly into the bank and a simultaneous 50 point rate cut from all of the world's major central banks.

The futures popped up into the green on this news, but I do not believe it will stop the decline. Once this bounce ends the market will simply go down again.. I consider it a joke. I remember when I was a kid being at someone's house and we all got the idea of flushing all of the toilets in the house at the same time to see what happened. We did it - and guess what - nothing special happened. This rate cut is not going to cure the woes in the economy or stop the bear market market in stocks.

I'll say it again - the bailout plan has done nothing to restore confidence just as every single announcement of government intervention or rate cut over the past year from the Fed and Treasury have not stopped the bear market, the economic slowdown, or the credit crunch.

The market is washing itself out and it can't be stopped. The Fed can only make the market go up for short periods of time. This bear market is going to continue until all of the traders, hedge fund managers, and weak hands sell. The only people that will be left will be the few strong investors who can stomach this drop and do not sell. Every potential seller is going to sell.

We are on the verge of a panic waterfall decline that will bring us a key bottom - possibly the bottom of this bear market if the market falls enough.

A shorter then

A self-fulfilling prophecy of course if he spreads it around enough.
I'm not aware anybody can call a bottom otherwise they'd be a millionaire and would be sitting on a beach and not writing articles trying to influence people.

Only IMO