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

Love the typo, Falco - a bling eye, one to remember ;)

Funny how the subconscious works chocolat!

Looks like FTSE is waiting for wall street to open for direction, and the outcome of the cds exposure from Lehman.

The total figures are hard to comprehend, for example RBS & BARC are thought to have 2.4 trillion total worldwide exposure each. But at least the Lehman cds position which needs to be settled today is only about $400 billion.

Did I say ONLY....... MADNESS........

Spitfire, any idea what time the cds exposure info will be released?

See times below, bearing in mind these are USA time zones. So by 19:00 UK time we should see the results.

9:45 a.m.-10 a.m. Auction participants will submit bids and offers for the debt backing the credit default swaps, which will be used to determine the initial recovery rate of the swaps.

10:30 a.m. Auction administrators Creditex and Markit will publish the initial recovery price and the open interest for the contracts will be published. The open interest reflects the amount of bids and offers that have been made, and will show if there are more buyers than sellers, or vice versa.

12:45 p.m. -1 p.m. Participating dealers will submit limit orders for the debt on behalf of themselves and their clients to fill the open interest

2 p.m. The final price of the auction will be published. (Reporting by Karen Brettell; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)

CHeers

bleak day in prospect as Nikkei crumbles by 6.5%

Maybe America will open higher, with news of Lehmans settlement going smoothly.

Just seen India have launched the Chanrayaan 1 rocket to the moon.
So you think a call centre in Mumbai is about as annoying as it gets, you just wait.....!
DOW futures currently -167 & recession officially predicted by M King. Probably find Xmas is cancelled due to lack of interest at some point!!!

very strange ..... Dow recovered 200 points in the last 15 minutes of trading - not so odd; just DCB or similar ...... got up this morning about 04:30 UK time, and noted Nikkei down another 6% and still seems to be so - but broadly in line with fall in NY ..... however, at that time IG indicated FTSE to open down about 60 and Dow recovering a further 40 ...... since then, FTSE is only indicated to open down 12 and Dow +145.

reality will be interesting!

i lied ..... Nikkei now down only(!) 3%

Did a little trading yesterday on indices and discovered the one click trade on the platform useful when trading dow as it's so fast moving, bit like playing an arcade machine in effect.

Signalwatch still looking for a break out of the 9300-8300 range

Some range huh!

and it's now right in the middle and going in both directios if not all!

Going the right way for me ;)

market ticker is anticipating 2-3000 dow drop in next 2 weeks!

Simon Griffin predicting a 'sucker bounce' followed by a 'slam dunk' final drop!
What exactly is a market ticker?

Which ones telling the truth?

I'm not sure if we haven't just had the sucker bounce,market ticker is a blog from US he seems to have called the right shots so far...