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

strange ..... i had no problem, but perhaps the platform for CFDs is slightly different

London has hit a new 30-month high on a partial recovery on Wall Street overnight and strong performance in Asia this morning.

Banks are leading the way, with good gains for Barclays, RBS and Lloyds this morning. Reports, since played down, that Business secretary Vince Cable could walk away from the coalition may have spurred some interest as the bonus season approaches.

Womenswear clothing retailer Alexon has issued the first weather-related profit warning. The snow has hurt sales during the crucial run-up to Christmas. It estimates the weather could knock 1.5m off profits for the year ending 29 January 2011. Other potential weather casualties are also under pressure. Retailer Dunelm is worst performer on the FTSE 350, but bingo club operator Rank, Dixons and Supergroup are all lower.

In other company news, AstraZeneca is to stop all development work on its fledgling respiratory drug motavizumab, resulting in a $445m impairment charge this quarter. Astra had already flagged up this possibility and has been considering the future of motavizumab since August.

BG Group's chief financial officer Ashley Almanza is leaving the oil company at the end of March next year, and will be replaced by ex-Vale finance boss Fabio de Oliveira Barbosa.

Credit card and ID theft specialist CPP is on track this year as growth elsewhere continues to offset a difficult market in southern Europe.

Zotefoams is lower even though it remains on course for a 20% lift in sales this year after fourth quarter revenues rose 7% driven by a surge at the high peformance end of its business. Profit before tax and exceptional items for 2010 will be in line with market expectations, the foam maker added.

I also saw that the is expected to buy $1.75 in 2011.

Dow at an interesting resistance level which dates back to December 1999....

U.S. fund managers moving out of gold into equities, expecting the New Year rally to continue. May be that the current run on gold has come to a temporary end?

http://www.thebulliondesk.com/news/?id=28600&v=0〈=en&cid=129850&type=1

wall street taking a hammering due to egyptian rioting; a correction also long overdue ..... almost needless to say, gold and oil going in the opposite direction .... nasty day in store for monday though i noticed that BLNX has had a good evening in usa, which may well not reflect in london

Another hopeless day on the FTSE! DOW looks to be opening marginally down, but if the Suez canal looks likely to be shut any time soon then more downside to come, imo. U.S. uneployment figures due on the 4th Feb, but not much else that I can see to help sentiment.

Interesting to note that the Dow shows only two red weekly candlesticks on a chart since the end of August 2010 (one of those being a loss of only a single point!).
Over that period, it has gained 20% in value (roughly 10K to 12K).

Since the recovery began in March 2009, there have been 101 candles on the weekly chart of which 31 have been red. Over that period the index has risen by 85.5% from its intraday low.

I'm not offering any analysis of these statistics, merely suggesting that they are interesting. (Could be due a drop though, at least on a week by week basis :-) DYOR, NAG etc..)

I won't fill the thread with this report but looks as if we got a dip coming, have a glance if you got nothing else to do.
Article here.

looks as though Dow will at least start up today on the back of some acceptable employment numbers .... whether or not that can be maintained even for just today, remains to be seen

and the answer looks to be "not a chance"! ..... Dow currently down 80 and all feeling very horrid

been out to Abingdon, come back to see it was a sh*t day.........glad i went out!!

"guru" reckons stop-loss at 11800, but i wouldn't have the balls for that ..... meanwhile, shall watch and hope that 12000 holds, but doesn't look too good at the moment

listen to your wife......she knows best!!

prob is that it's like tinitus - no, not tittiness you rude boy

try this excerpt from gaddafi ...
"Colonel Gaddafi offered his condolences to those killed in the bloodshed and called for calm. He also said people were fighting amongst themselves and taking hallucinogenic drugs"

friday - fingers and toes x'ed that Dow can finish the week on a positive note .... currently +48 which is off its earlier highs

dow now looking very sick at -128 primarily on the escalation of libyan violence and unrest ...... does not augur well for london tomorrow

the french are so damn predictable ..... a long time ago i know, but when libya was previously outlawed by all other western nations, who supported ghadafi and walked in for huge oil contracts? .... now read the latest reports and get a sense of deja vu

Market summary note from Morgan Stanley:
Risk-reward for equities beginning to deteriorate
We believe the risk-reward for equities is beginning to deteriorate given a combination of peaking economic lead indicators, interest rate hikes, a rising oil price and elevated readings on our market timing indicators.
Time to invest in defensive stocks again
Given these headwinds we recommend investors become a bit more prudent and look to increase their weighting in defensive sectors. We cite four reasons:
1) History suggests that defensives outperform post peaks in lead indicators and at the start of a new interest rate cycle.
2) Defensive sectors are very unpopular European investors are now more underweight defensives than financials.
3) Over the last 40 years the only prior occasion when defensives had underperformed as much on a two-year rolling basis was in the 2000 TMT bubble.
4) Post poor performance, defensive valuations look increasingly attractive.
Telecoms to maximum overweight.
We are raising defensives from a big underweight to neutral by increasing our overweight in Telecoms and reducing our underweight in Utilities. Telecoms is our preferred defensive sector as we think it offers greater potential for a positive growth surprise as well as offering a substantial dividend yield boost over other sectors.
Going underweight Industrials
To fund our more positive view on defensives, we are going underweight Industrials as we believe the sector is one of the most vulnerable to an inflection point in the economic growth story and is relatively more exposed to building margin pressures.