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

Not me.

all about banks and uk being shorted to destruction!

Bit too close to the truth for my liking !!!

sure glad i am short of more than i am long (WOS, WPP, MKS) than i am long ..... only long of consequence is IEC which is a special sit

Nikki over 7% down, could be testing new lows here with dow at it's lowest point.

Ig not been hedging properly ?
IG Group Plc (IGG LN) slumped 41.75 pence, or 18 percent, to 186.50, the sharpest drop since at least 2005. The owner of the IG Index financial-market betting brand, said first-half bad-debt costs will be almost quadruple the total for all of last year because of customers' wrong-way bets on Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc stock.

So you can trade on margin, exceed your leveraged position, fail to pay more cash in to your account & I.G. will then write it off as a bad debt? I am almost tempted to open an account!

Must be why they have started to automatically close out people's positions if they go over margin limit! That would not work though if something was to gap down significantly at the open

IG have always done that if you have not squared up pronto .... thyey are just being that much tougher now, but with markets as volaitile as they are, IG can then be left with stocks (long or short) which they have to liquidate

I suppose with their ban on shorting banking stocks it makes it impossible for them to hedge positions? Damn 768 S&p long(2002 low ) did not get filled!

it's not IG's ban, it's FSA or whichever authority

I'm daft cynic but not that daft

and good job you are not long .... dow plummetting again

I have tried a small wti long at 50 dollars probably end in tears and a small s&p at 768

Yes not very sensible!

Would expect ftse to be well down after collapse on wall street, but bargain hunters were out last night in Asia. Might happen today here.

I might join them if I fell brave, watching sdl, rhl and sse.

US futures tend to turn round mid-am so as they are up now, it doesn't look particularly good for later on unless the pattern changes

Dealers normally check dow futures at 11:00 to confirm trends, dow is up 225 and rising at the moment, so lets see what happens when the early risers arise stateside.

Seems to have bounced off 2002 support or just below it. There could be an arbitrage opportunity with dow/s&p ratio running at 1:10 when certainly when I last checked it was 1:8 so considering a market neutral long s@p/ short dow although not sure how to gear it should it be 8 long s@p for every dow point or ten ?

Sorry Falcothou I have never traded that way, but I'm sure there are people here who have. But you have aroused my interest, so I will rearch later.

Good luck........