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

Good call for Obama bounce cynic, futures cracked 8370

Good call for Obama bounce cynic, futures cracked 8370

Good call for Obama bounce cynic, futures cracked 8370

thanks Falco, but read your post first time around - lol!

The usual chaos with on-line trading today!
Selftrade already posted a warning that access will be tricky & have found that it is impossible to even log in at present. RBS falling like a stone (-30%) & am stuck just watching! Somehow you would have thought that they would have made provision for high volumes of trades by now, after the last fiasco!!!

This is selftrade you know.

They are somewhere betwwen useless and crap!

It's been a long time since I have posted here. Someone might find this interesting as to why we still have further to fall.

http://fr.youtube.com/watch?v=ZOD_fsg4bmg

What the hell happened??? I nipped out for a couple of hours & the FTSE has gone from +74 to -44 !!! RBS down 60% can't be the whole answer. (Who would have thought it. Talk of RBS now going to be nationalised. LLoyds falling in sympathy?)

I tried trading first thing this morning with Barclays Stockbrokers, the system still seemed to be active but it was so slow it might as well been down. I had to use another broker, I would have thought that systems would have been upgraded by now.

Free online purchases of LLOY shares @ Halifax sharedealing services between 19th and 31st Jan. Desparate or what, I still cannot believe my luck and sense of timing when I sold HBOS for 11.60, most unusual for me.
2517

So, having seen the You-Tube clip, the theory is that the big guys with b's will borrow the stock in huge quanties, short it until the company (Bank) is on it's knees & then buy the stock at a rock bottom price, supported by the fact that the Government will not allow a bank to go under. Is that good enough reason to ban shorting financials for good? I seem to remember the arguement that shorters themselves can't drive a share price down, but that fundamentals in the company must be a contributing factor, such as mega writeoffs & profit warnings.
Just glad I don't have any bank stocks myself, as nationalisation is looking likely, imo.

HC
its not the borrowing and shorting thats the problem. i read somewhere a while back that its naked shorting thats happening, apparantly thats not supposed to happen. but some brokers it was claimed lend out "the same stock" to more than one client. clearly fundamentals do play a part thats why they pick on the weaker companies. dont know if its true but might explain a thing or two. as a major shareholder would you knowingly lend out your stock to shorters?
so whos doing all the lending?
regards
jkd

Worked out very well for Porsche they made 6 billion from doing it!

F
hi, you are so right.
but doing what exactly?
remind me, what was it that they did? i can't remember the exact details, must be getting old.
did they lend out their stock many times over? were they aware of it? as i recall it was a tightly held stock, just the type for what may have been in olden days called a "corner".
thanks and regards
jkd

F -:)
it occurs to me that they didnt lend their stock many times over, but being tightly
held what they did do was lend the remaining "free floating" stock many times over,( well within the overall share issue,) and it was this that wasnt sufficient to satisfy the covering.
when i mentioned major shareholder previously i was thinking along the lines of say 3% for a major institution in say a ftse 100/250 company. that leaves quite a lot of "free issue" and public participation. it seems it was mostly hedge funds who got caught for most of the porsche debacle. LOL
thats a one off, usually its us pi's.
its still happening.
regards
jkd

http://radian.org/notebook/porsche
They built a controlling stake 43% stock/32% options leaving 6% available to trade not requiring to disclose it producing a very crowded exit!

DOW futures currently -77 which doesn't bode well for our 'Obama bounce'.

stopped out my short on ftse I took out at begining of month, could be a bounce but i don't think it'll clear 4300, I expect it to test lows in the next month as the deteriation in economic data accelerates.
The bad news this week will really hit home hard on consumer confidence this month as it did in October, I expect Feb will be a truely dreadful month for any retail business, (unfortunately mine is vulnerable to this downturn in confidence) job losses will be counted in from after Xmas and those credit card bills will hit. All told bloody crap for the next 1/4, I am finding it hard to imagine a pick up in sentiment before the third 1/4 and am only really interested in going long when we hit 3200, probably around April at a complete guess. If I get it wrong great as far as the future of us all is concerned, if not even better.

I'm looking for somewhere around 2500 for the FTSE before I commit any significant funds on the long side. Seemed crazy when I mentioned it over a year ago, seems less crazy by the day. For now I'm avoiding the markets. No time to be risking capital with job security a concern.

Strawbs.

So where do you put your capital in the meantime? Saver's rates are poor, premium bonds a waste of time....etc etc