The market seems to be selling-off on the back of limited bad news imo, apart from the dollar that is.

If you can hold your nerve and apart from any short term requirements to offload poor performing stocks, I have a couple!!, my advice would be sit tight. This does not have the feel of the tech(mining!) bubble at all. Difference being there are a lot of good fundamentals, unlike in 2000 when there were a lot of over rated nothing companies.

The kiss strategy sounds interesting!
Anything to do with jumping in with both feet & kissing your ar*e goodbye? :o)

Yes!

Ted .... i think your strategy is correct ..... as we have seen, when the market tumbles it is indiscriminate and violent .... bit like a wife really

aye yes, i recently disposed of her too...
so far a good move... lol

Well, we are all now sitting on a modest profit hopefully & wondering whether to cash in tomorrow morning on the expectation of a big sell off in the afternoon, or to sit tight & hope the trend holds in to next week. It's the tricky "glass half full or half empty" question.
I am tempted to watch & sell in the morning, based on the consensus of opinion being that there is going to be another dip.
I used to be indecisive, but now I'm not so sure.

at least i have long gold and short Dow as some insurance

so glad i'm a 'glass half full' kinda bloke who topped up a bit. Now the the question is do i take the profit on azm. Also topped up on kmr and acc but only up a little at the mo.

Kivver, just read your profile!!! Awesome!!! With a profile like that you deserve.........well, good luck!
Half full is the way forward,........... I think. :o)

12300???????

not nearly as sanguine as ellio .... market certainly fell too far too fast, and is typically now performing the reverse trick

It doesn't seem to want to regain the gap

Weakish finish on Wall Street; pretty weak start to London; weekend about to start ..... down seems the obvious call, but by how much?

Think they're all waiting for non farm payrolls......which means it'll probably come in as expected and still leave everyone clueless....

Strawbs.

US employment data at 1.30 GMT will determine. I'm about to go away for a long weekend, so I'm staying out. So many different opinions, points of view - I can't believe I'm being so risk-averse!

IMO, we still have further to go down, but I will let the charts show me.

Good luck to those who dip their toes in today.

Steve

the employment data will be interpreted whicehver way the market feels inclined ..... if strong, the market could either decide that indicates more underlying inflation or that yippee the economy is still strong ..... if weak, proof that recessionary times are just around the corner or that yippee inflation and/or rate rises have been pushed back

Dull, Dull, Dull! Everyone watching & waiting for the DOW to open?

US employment data will be fundamental (1.30pm our time) IMHO.

...Could go either way.

Edit:
http://www.moneyam.com/action/news/showArticle?id=1830111

Thanks to Kyoto In the Investor's Room

it will certainly affect the markets' direction, but as i postde above, whatever the figures say, they can be interpreted as good or bad depending on the prevailing mood

well well well ..... so far so wrong with Dow, but shall hold my Dow short open as a hedge against being long on stocks (apart from BFC) ..... and will Dow reconsider and go into reverse?

here is the transcript of the US employment figures ..... i have highlighted the bits i think are most interesting ..... it could be well argued that the severe slump in construction jobs is a reflection of a similar fall in house-building starts, which i would have thought was a firm indication of a creaking economy.

US February non-farm payrolls up 97,000, unemployment rate falls to 4.5 pct
AFX


WASHINGTON (AFX) - US employers added fewer employees to their payrolls last month than in each of the prior two months as construction hiring plummeted, the Labor Department said today. Still, the unemployment rate fell slightly in February.

The economy added 97,000 jobs in February, essentially in line with the 100,000 jobs economists had expected from the survey of employer payrolls.

It's the slowest payroll growth since January 2005, when 95,000 jobs were added. The unemployment rate, taken from a separate survey of households, fell slightly to 4.5 pct in the month from 4.6 pct.

The drop was led by a 62,000 drop in construction jobs, the sharpest decline in the sector since 1991.

In December and January, the number of jobs added was revised up by 55,000 to a cumulative two-month total of 372,000.

Average hourly wages rose 0.4 pct in February, or 0.06 usd, to 17.16 usd.

Average hourly earnings have risen 4.1 pct in the past year, unchanged from the 12 months leading up to January.

The average workweek fell slightly to 33.7 pct in February from 33.8 in the prior month.

In the past twelve months to February, non-farm payrolls rose by 2 mln. For all of 2006, non-farm payrolls rose a revised 2.26 mln.