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

halifax (and others) ...... so is the strategy to sit tight, reduce holdings, or even short? ...... i am inclined to reduce and maybe take a short, either on the indices or on specific stocks

have reduced some holdings and waiting to see how the Dow future behaves tomorrow, a FTSE short needs a fairly tight stop loss.

Amazing. DOW was -27 first thing this morning & now is + 125! FTSE short would have been a brave call halifax! (Easy to say with hindsight ;o) )

Harry quite right so a tight stop loss worked, are we entering another period of increased volatility?

i have a small FTSE short still running, more as insurance than anything else ..... if markets slump, then won't do me much good, but the converse is also true!

cynic - I've just done the same thing for the similar reasons!

Pure Gambling...

Bet its not :-)

Too volatile ,a bet on the DOW or FTSE going up or down right now is a gamble.
Your just speculating on the run and predicting a fall .

No - just a bit of hedging on overnight long positions.

Thats why its gambling DOW +124

Looks like a load of M&A activity in the U.S. has bolstered the DOW. My guess is the FTSE will follow suit on tuesday but am tempted to watch for a profit taking window later in the week as this mini rally is likley to run out of steam, imo.
Can't fathom where the gold price is now going. Have a few stocks which I bought based on gold going up past the $1000 level & staying there for a while, but not confident I have made the right call.

jimmy - I've just closed my short +17!

skinny ,while i think a clever trader can beat the market with shares and an investor who does their research can also ,i dont go for the indicies ,some days you can see blue sky ahead but most of the time its gambling ,,especially this morning you were lucky.

jimmy - I don't often do indicies either. At the point that I took the short, the DOW was already up 125 and the FTSE had had a strong day. I had some positions (trading not investing) that I wanted to keep open and it seemed a reasonable hedge to short the FTSE. Anyway - onwards and upwards!

Where to now ,,,i'm not so sure we're going to have this big slide everyones predicting ,maybe a slowdown or sideways with the odd bad day.

going down..... how far?

Nipped off to play squash & got back to find DOW -104. What caused that to happen?

poor stats from US.

Yep, just seen:
Sept. 30 (Bloomberg) -- "U.S. stocks fell for a second day as an unexpected contraction in a measure of business activity spurred concern the economy is struggling to recover.

American Express Co.,Walt Disney Co. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. dropped more than 2 percent to lead declines in all 30 stocks in the Dow Jones Industrial Average after the Institute for Supply Management-Chicago Inc.s business barometer trailed economists estimates. CIT Group Inc., the 101-year-old commercial lender, tumbled 35 percent on concern it will be forced into bankruptcy. "