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

off you go then, where perhaps someone else has more patience than i to explain some very basic facts about charts - which of course are only a tool anyway

Cynic - Surprised at you reacting like that towards klal, was a good question. At least have the good grace to admit that so far anyway your timing if nothing else has been suspect!

i'll accept that perhaps i was a bit and unusually snappy, so my apologies

however, you will find several previous posts of mine where i advise of apparent resistance or similar levels ..... mostly these are courtesy of my "chart guru" who is generally/often pretty accurate on these things ..... his logic, insofar as charts are ever logical, is based on something quite complex called GANN Theory

in this instance, 11000 should have provided the "tipping point" with 11100 as the suggested stop-loss ..... in fact, i only went modestly short at a little under 11100

while it is of course currently out of the money, the damage is more than bearable, not least because, almost de facto, other stocks are rising

in fact, i don't often back the indices, but certainly use them as an indicator with regards to whether to buy or take profits elsewhere

Thanks cynic understand your thinking now.

Looks like the Goldman Sachs new saga should make you a few bob now cynic :o)

That's stopped the relentless rise!

Fraud in a bank? Never!

my short not looking quite so silly now ..... that's always the prob when a market falls; it does it much quicker than on the rise

Is that a gentle sigh of relief I hear from the Cynic house?!!! ;o)

yes and no ..... it's only a modest position as it's easy to get over-ambitious, and of course tumbling dow = tumbling london ..... banked a couple of reasonable profits this afternoon on PMO and PCI, as much as a precaution as anything else - keeps the warchest topped up too

Goldman scandal is what has spooked the DOW period ....

true, but to be honest, dow has been looking for an excuse to drop for a little while ..... somehow it has defied gravity and a couple of sets of bad employment numbers

a fall of 3/400 points is far from impossible without remotely challenging the upward trend

on re-reading my archives ....

11000 is an obvious "round number" support, but in truth10780 is arguably the next meaningful point - that was the initial upward target

if that is reached and breached, then there's a further 200 point downside

Not much mention of the election here.....anybody see the whole debate last night ?...caught just ten minutes of sweep brown, bugs bunny cameron and the other bloke !...by the way, who the hell is he ?, ......love the way now that the tv news has become all impartial all of a sudden after promoting labour for the last 12 years...talk about turncoats !....

You may now get your DOW downturn cynic ...

As for the election i shall be back in the UK for that and can at least help vote Labour out . Would also be nice to be out of the EU but that's never going to happen ...

RF .... yes both my wife and i did ..... we concur that the newspapers must have been watching a different prog if they thought clegg was fantastic .... we thought him dreadful and like an overgrown schoolboy ..... standing with his hands in his pockets was also less than impressive

i thought cameron looked a bit frayed towards the end, but (to me) he at least sounded and presented like a serious contender to lead the country

while there is certainly a lot of anger against ALL politicians, i strongly suspect that when it comes to "X on paper time", lib dems will do ok, but will not approach anything like the level indicated by today's polls

A change of government is well overdue, time to give the country a fresh start (if you can call it that) and bring in some laws preventing overborrowing...

" bring in some laws preventing overborrowing"
and how would you propose that???

one could say similarly about lib dems idea of immigrants only being able to work in a specified area of the country.
i suppose they could be indentured like slaves!
restrictive societies like UAE and Saudi assuredly make it very difficult for foreigners to move jobs, but those are very small communities, and UK courts would (quite rightly) refuse to sanction similar practice

i get a nasty feeling that monday is going to bring more heavy falls, including more in usa when it opens for biz ..... this goldman thing has the feel of "can of worms"

I don't have a one line answer to preventing getting oneself in to indebtness...but the next government are going to have to put paid to buy a sofa now and pay next year...that sort of thing and also put paid to labour's only answer to anything : "tax and borrow".

I hope it's not going to be too much of a drop but another 40 points down looks on the cards....