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

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.

the markets are now starting to look very weak indeed

today sees bad employment and deficit numbers in usa, and libya looking more and more of a disaster zone with oil refineries being shelled and the rebels losing their grip on two important towns (zaiwah and ras lanuf)

unless something very positive pops out of the woodwork, i am fully expecting dow to have dumped say 250 points by tomorrow's close - but i haven't married money to mouth

Interesting that the DOW & FTSE graphs haven't exactly tracked each other over the last month or so. Looks like the UK is having more domestic problems than the U.S.

your prediction only 60 points off cynic and there's another 30 hours to go! :)

"guru's" stop-loss levels are 11800 (dow) and 5760 (ftse)
will either be triggered?
at the moment dow, is struggling hard to maintain the psychological 12000

long Dow @ 12006

what a dreadful day, with only Morrisons and Anite (just) managing to be blue ...... this is of course always the danger with CFDs if you cannot watch them constantly, which fortunately I can ..... i have ducked sharply and banked a bunch of (reduced) profits ..... just hope it's enough to see it all through until we get a decent bounce - XEL would be a good one to start with!

Only blue I have are NG JLIF GRG & SSE.

on edit:- I must admit to a dabble in MHG which is up - a pure punt.