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

cynic - can you put the charts in the opening post please.

the ones i quote from are not copyable ...... they are actually produced by a pal of mine who works some very complex and arcane system called GANN theory - all gibberish to me! - but it's reasonable accurate insofar as charts ever can be

a chirpier start indicated in NY ...... employment numbers must be modestly encouraging

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Number of people filing for initial jobless benefits fell to 473,000 last week; down 31,000 from previous week.

I'm not confident that the downtrend has been broken though, so am sitting on some cash & will wait a week or two I think. August has not been the greatest month for trading. Hopefully, when The City boys get back to their desks, things will pick up.

i merely post!

Well the +54 DOW futures I saw earlier has already fizzled in to a minus figure!

DOW -140. Nudging the 10000 level. Not expecting great things on the FTSE on tues, which is a shame as the DOW was nicely up on friday.

Now DOW up 243 points! Non-farm payrolls on friday so have a feeling this could be short lived.

Harry payroll numbers are not going to suddenly jump one way or another, what is of far greater importance is sentiment and the yanks are beginning to wake up to the fact that they may well miss out if they continue to talk their markets down as the rest of the world goes the other way.

Well, I'm not sure you are right, as trading today on FTSE & DOW reasonably flat, so the employment figures may have a bigger effect than you think on friday p.m.
Of course I am talking about the immediate effect.

no doubt there will be a knee jerk reaction one way or the other but now the "vibes" coming from europe and the far east are becoming more positive..... we shall see.

Just realised it's Labour day in the U.S. this w/e, so even more reason to see a rough trading session on friday.

Bloomberg - "Companies in the U.S. added more jobs than forecast in August, easing concern the economy was falling back into recession.

Private payrolls that exclude government agencies climbed 67,000, after a revised 107,000 increase in July that was more than initially estimated, Labor Department figures in Washington showed today. The median estimate of economists surveyed by Bloomberg News called for a gain of 40,000. Overall employment fell 54,000 for a second month and the unemployment rate rose to 9.6 percent as more people entered the labor force."

"Triple-witching" day is the third Friday of the month that ends each quarter. It marks the simultaneous expiration, at the close, of stock options, index options and index futures" and that is today!

US Jobless numbers are said to be horrid - not up on CNN yet - so be prepared for some interesting happenings in the markets in general

cynic - market seems to barely take notice these days other than a blip

i think a correction is now o'due

I wouldn't necessarily disagree with that but with every bad report or detail being shrugged off it might not happen until you think it won't!

very true :-)))

Bizarre day on the DOW. Started off approx -66, up to flat & back down to -87 atm.
Seems the jobless figures were not too bad, though not much consolation for the extra 12000 people out of a job.