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

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)

Money week ,now thats a quick way to lose your shirt.

Must confess to NOT going heavily short, just selective selling and some top slicing, but I did buy some more CRA earlier this week, having paid far too much for my original holding.
2517

Brave man George. If you had said you were interested in CRA you could have bought my holding! Going nowhere fast that one, imo.

You were asking too much for them HC ha! ha! I'm on a sizeable loss on CRA so brought the average down a bit, still a few bob to make up though. I think it's make or brake for them this year, good luck with your own holdings.
2517

I don't want to be a shorter killjoy but I think that this drop is just a pullback albeit temporary....recovery could come as early as next week.....we must ask ourselves : why are the markets dropping ?....big bad news ! not really apart from Haiti....and unemployment, so my guess is a rebound from this drop.

quite difficult to call ..... it's very worrying when stocks like Google paste fantastic results and get walloped ..... there's also been a slew of poor/bad economic news ..... finally, there is a concern that the recovery will be tempered as gov'ts recall at least some of the cash that was being ladled out a few months ago and china, in particular, tightens the economic pursestrings

I'm starting to wonder whether we have got some forced selling again by an institution/hedge fund in trouble. Some of the sp's look a little odd to me.

when the shit hits the fan, everything and anything gets sold off indiscriminately ..... not much different with the reverse

however, it's looking as though Dow will end the week positively .... if so, look for 10485 ..... from memory, that needs to be breached to revive the upward trend