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

Are you sure about PRU? Broker upgraded it today to buy from hold. No mention of fund raising (though I know they are bidding for some of the AIG assets).

HC ---I don't know that any of my list will tap s/holders it's just my opinion.
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HC-------broker upgrade for PRU sp down 11%+.
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DOW 8000 level seems to be holding for the time being. Good for investors, perhaps not so good for the CFD/SB's.

Gone long Dax/ short FTSE only 110 between them when placed trade so hoping for divergence, need patience but probably need a good headless chicken rally or Porsche escapade to get the Dax into hyperspace it used to trade at a 1000 point premium!

interesting to note that Dow bounced off 7900 support and ultimately managed to hold quite comfortably above 8000

tomorrow could be interesting ..... papers have been full of doom and gloom for banks and retailers and uk economy in general ...... apparently 70% of trades with (scumbags) TDW last week was on the banks, with buyers outnumbering sellers 3:1 ..... i question whether that optimism will be well-founded .... i think not

The day traders must love it! Bit too risky for me though as an investment, as the future of the banks is still in question.
Wed is looking interesting with Int results from BSKYB & Vedanta, Trading statement from The Pru & a number of biggish Co's going ex-divi (including IG Gp).
Also US Unemployment Claims, US Crude Oil Inventories, US FOMC Statement, US Federal Funds Rate, all of which I expect to be worse than expected.
Sentiment is still negative, imo, but if you don't put your money in to equities (or similar), where do you put your cash? C & G B/Soc have just written to me & their best savings rate is 2.6% gross!!! Most accounts are sub 2%.

"with buyers outnumbering sellers 3:1"

Might that be fund managers selling large holdings and three times as many general punters buying them up.

In other words the professionals being pessimistic and the amateurs optimistic.

TP

TP .... don't disagree with the sentiment at least .... personally, i remain short of LLOY (and a few other stocks) and am more than happy to stay so

Yep me too cyners.

short of WOS, BDEV, IAP, PRU, and Barclays.

long, POG, RRS.

Thats a devil, IG index not taking shorts on BDEV.........swines.

Slightly off topic, but a number of you guys are shorting PRU. Recent broker upgrade to a buy & increase in sp to 300p would suggest otherwise. Obviously I am missing something, but what, please?

HC..

PRU exposure to hybrid securities from UK and EURO banks, which will be useless if banks are nationalised.

WOS going right way down and did a u turn on Barclays which is now just in profit.

Sorry to p anyone off with a long post here but quite interesting from DOW point tof view from Trader tom

Today Microsoft is worth only 136 Dow points, even though it is one of the biggest companies in the world, with a market cap of $153billion. If it went bust, it would shave off 2% of the Dow. That is all.

IBM is worth $120 billion, which is less than Microsoft. If IBM went bust, the Dow would lose over 650 points!!

The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) is a price-weighted index. The divisor for the DJIA is 7.964782. That means that every $1 a DJIA stock loses, the index loses 7.96 points, regardless of the company's market capitalization.

"Dow Jones, the keeper of the DJIA, has an unwritten rule that any DJIA stock that gets below $10 gets tossed out. As of last night's close (January 20), The DJIA had the following stocks less than $10:

Citi Group (C) = $2.80 GM (GM) = $3.50 B of A (BAC) = $5.10 Alcoa (AA) = $8.35

If all 4 stocks went to ZERO today, the Dow would lose 157 points.

In the Dow index there are 4 finance stocks. There is Citi Group, Banc of America, American Express and JP Morgan.

If all 4 stocks went to zero, the Dow would lose 331 points.

If you add GE as a finance stock, and it too went to zero, the Dow would lose 434 points.

IMPORTANT

If IBM went to zero, the Dow on this stock alone would lose more than 650 points.

As a matter of fact you can take all the financial stocks including GE and including all the Dow stocks that trade less than $10, and if they all opened at zero today, they would bring down the Dow index by less points than if IBM alone went to zero.

IBM in the world of Dow is worth MORE than Citi, BAC, GM, Alcoa, JPM, AMEX and GE!!!!

You could add Microsoft to this list and not be over where IBM is today in terms of the DJIA index.

Let's look at it another way. A 10% positive move for IBM would move the Dow up by over 60 points. A 10% move by Citigroup would increase the Dow by less than 3 points.

Falc,

Interesting indeed.

I've always used the S&P 500 as my marker. I have never understood how an index of only thirty stocks could be a measure of the US stock market. Your post makes it even more irrational.

But I suppose that if computer driven trading on individual stocks is partially driven by movement of the Dow (sell/buy Ministock Inc when the Dow hits x) you cannot ignore it.

TP

Strange that something so irrational should be the chauffeur of the world markets!

Could someone explain why WOS current sp around 186p, has been downgraded to neutral by broker UBS, with a halved target price of 300p. Surely there is plenty of upside from current levels (If UBS are serious about a 300p target) to warrant a buy, or at least an add. I see this quite often from brokers where their recommendation seem to be at odds with their sp target. I don't hold these.
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Part of wos problem according to papers is having debt in euros

Closed long dax /short ftse for 250 points