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

Oil has shot up (futures for february anyway)....since 16.30..uk close up $1.15 in 20 mn to nearly $83 dollars a barrel.....here comes another oil spike....perhaps $90 on the way !.

gold has had another strong day too - spot $1136 at time of writing
spot US light crude $83.95

Another dollar up !...incredible.....is this cold weather : "the day after tomorrow syndrome"...(the film) ?.....should be a very firm start for oilies and certain gold producers when the market reopens if this continues....

FTSE seems to be getting a little bit ahead of itself atm, with possible head & shoulders forming on the graph on page 1.
Am tempted to sell my profitable holdings & search for new sectors.
DOW seems to be slower & steadier in it's rise.

HC
i dont see a h&s forming, not yet anyway. ok can see a possible left shoulder but that would be predicting a top(and who knows where that might be?)along with a retracement back to and followed by a bounce off the projected 'neck line' followed by a rally and failure to take out the top and fall back to neck line and then penetrate downwards on heavy volume.(Have i lost anyone?)
thats a lot of stuff that has to happen before i see it. thanks for the early warning though, and i thought i wore bins, lol good luck to you.
the dow is forming both a daily and weekly rising wedge,the lower support/trend line is currently holding up the lows as is the higher resistance/ trend line of that same wedge holding down the highs so until these lower lines are taken out still bullish but could be first signs of a reversal if they fail.
may or may not fit in with your perception of that h&s. sorry i cant post charts to show graphically as i dont know how. its there though.
thats my chartist view. my fundy view and im not very good at this, is that we are in limbo until after a may election in the uk, no one wants to admit or own up to anything before then. after then it may take a month or two to settle down and then we shall all be made aware of the severity of things for 2010 and 2011 and maybe longer. hope i am wrong, just my opinion. as always i try to follow and not forecast, thats why im not very good at fundys. lol.
regards
jkd

Dow having quite a good time at the moment (+62) ..... some economy numbers out in an hour or so, so fingers crossed that those are also encouraging and that index continues north ...... gold has also recovered about $6.5 to $1134.5

Gold started the day at nearly 1160 but still depressed the miners. will take a lot of understanding..on Monday all was positive and bought into quite a few miners and oilies for a good week forcast, but come tuesday and a complete reversal. Although nothing has gone way down and not a lot of loss still frustrating. like you cynic. lol
I guess that's what keeps investing interesting..BB

If it (FTSE 100) bounces up from 5400 my h&s prediction will be 2/3rds complete!

FTSE down 58 at 5436. DOW futures currently -20.
As most stocks seem to be down today, I assume every man & his dog are trading Cadburys & squeezing the last 4% out of that sp.???

Harry - I have some CBRY and for today, SVT

Mind boggling figures, but the americans don't seem to think they are too bad:
" Jan. 19 (Bloomberg) -- Citigroup Inc., the U.S. bank that is 27 percent owned by the Treasury Department, ended a three- quarter profit streak with a $7.6 billion loss on costs to exit the governments bailout program.

The fourth-quarter loss of 33 cents a share was narrower than the record loss of $17.3 billion, or $3.40 a share, a year earlier, New York-based Citigroup said today in a statement. The company was expected to lose 30 cents a share, the average estimate of 18 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg.

Chief Executive Officer Vikram Pandit had to book an $8 billion pretax charge when he repaid $20 billion of bailout funds in December to avoid being left behind by rival banks that exited the Troubled Asset Relief Program. Taxpayers still own 7.7 billion Citigroup shares, and Pandit failed to restore the bank to profitability in his second full year in the top job.

Its been a tumultuous two years, said William Fitzpatrick, a financial-industry analyst with Optique Capital Management in Racine, Wisconsin, which oversees about $850 million. Theyre probably done capital-raising, and investors now want some visibility on what the earnings power is.

Citigroup may spend most of 2010 recovering from the bailout, grappling with more loan losses and pushing to sell or wind down unwanted businesses with more than $600 billion of assets, or a third of the banks total.

Share Price
Citigroup dropped 9 cents, or 2.6 percent, to $3.33 in composite trading on the New York Stock Exchange at 9:43 a.m. That compares with $34.77 on Dec. 10, 2007, the last closing price before Pandit was named to the top post."

Dow after-hours did not react at all kindly to the Dems loss of Masachusetts to Reps .... Dems had held for 50 years ...... seemingly there are implications to Obama's plans for healthcare reform, and by inference, to his general strength

Story here - Massachusetts Senate poll loss threatens Obama agenda

volume going up markets going down= sell off?

what a truly nasty couple of days ...... as i write Dow is -220 at 10385, following which FTSE is down a further 35 after hours at 5300 ..... in fact, i see there should have been good support for the Dow at about 10485, so that has patently failed unless there is a late recovery.

gold too is weak at $1098 (-$13), so nothing to cheer about anywhere.

Good about bloody time:o)

Money Week magazine gives 'share tipsters at a glance' each week, the tipsters are from newspapers and Shares mag and the IC, for each of the last 2 weeks there has been 24 buy recommendations and just 2 sells. What's that phrase we are told 'the time to buy is when all around are selling, and vice versa'.
2517

Spot on George :o)

and did you both sell or smarter still, go heavily short?

Correct cynic! and will continue to do so until the Dollar Index stops making higher highs and higher lows and the Dow and the Ftse stop making lower highs and lower lows.. I Wish.... Short EMG, BSY and very tight stop on Micro Focus :o)