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

Should i close my short @78?

Again, I have to say, good call skinny - if you want an answer, I'd say, first: to which index do you refer? and second: if it's the Dow, and you mean 9878, depends where you went short from. You'll never catch me sat on the fence! :-)

9838 a few minutes ago

now back to 9900

stops 'r us ?

:-)

well that looks to have burnt your fingers badly camelot, if you were bold enough to be short ..... if you look now, you'll see dow cash recovered heftily to 10080 - i expect futures are similar

hoodless brennan i have always regarded as a somewhat unfortunate name .... it brings to mind a mistakenly circumcised catholic! ..... they should perhaps change to hoodless bernstein

I had to grab the Dow last night at the spooky figure of 911!! Also long UKX @ 4985

another spiffing day, but i need to constantly remind myself that the market can dive even faster and sharper

Does it matter cynic? Dont you swing both ways?

only when playing golf

LOL ,, as Churchill said "a good walk spoiled" ..

mark twain but never mind ...... played very poorly yesterday but was just very glad to be out in the sunshine after a shitty tuesday

Mark Twain it was.
For us 'non golfers' (what's the point of trying to knock a little white ball down a hole in the middle of a field?) G.K. Chesterton said: "I regard golf as an expensive way of playing marbles."

Isn't golf a game played by men with knobbly balls?

So how would you categorise the lady golfers?

You've made some great calls overnight recently Splat..... Very well done.
Am curious though .... do you leave stops .... before going to bed?
All the best.
Amar

A game played by women with knobbly balls, of course. Why? What did you think I meant?

:o)
Discretion being the better part of valour, I will refrain from delving into the risky subject of women venting their emotions on vulnerable balls. Knobbly balls it is!

Thanks Amar. Regarding the stops, no not usually, I like contrarian trading. Markets at the moment have been so volatile that a big swing one way has tended to have been countered the other over a very short time scale. It's without doubt a risky strategy, but I have found that by starting with a relatively small position and increasing or decreasing as the trade pans out seems to work well. My biggest failure, as I have said many times on here, is that I'm always too soon to bank a profit! Having said that, the reason I've been in the game as long as I have (only a decade) is that I'm equally quick to bank a loser. In other words, I never get a trade wrong, they just sometimes go against me!! :-)

cynic LOl

you are really good at misinterpreting
that's 2 out of 2

must be a gift

Closed my AV from last Monday +35 +10% after costs.