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

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

lets hope so. What a recovery by the miners!

In particular, XTA and AQP

DOW looks to be tanking .

I'm hoping for some blue days next week ....hope this drop peters out.

truly awful -216
monday will be bloodbath

Might be an initial drop followed by recovery.....it can't drop forever because economies are slowly pulling out of the recession even thought it might take the whole of this year and part of the next. The stockmarket always looks at least 6 months ahead.

quite a diff call, as it's certainly all too easy to get sucked into some panic-selling, and then being too shaken to re-buy on the bounce

rf what is going to drive the markets higher? Stockmarkets have been a beneficiary of QE and the low interest rates, with QE about to cease and interest rates on the rise, not to mention fancy earnings expectations or the higher tax burden we will have to shoulder, I see nothing to sustain it's current level, let alone move higher.
2517

Isn't the coming general election going to affect the way the FTSE performs as time runs out for Brown?