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

2517GEORGE - I hope you are right, I'm keeping a close eye on RBS, looking for a good entrance price. But as I can see the UK Banks haven't written off that much, compared to US and European banks.

no ..... no cojones! ...... hard to believe that SOLA is holding up, but then so is PVCS

trouble with shorting is that one tends to do it when sp has already tumbled, and bear squeezes can be fearsome ..... WPP looks a good candidate though

I can understand PVCS holding up, they already have a profit making business, I wouldn't mind a holding in them in the future. But SOLA seem to be built on a mountain of debt.

all very contrary, but sp just not seem to want to drop .... have a look at the chart

don't like saying it, but Dow looks as though it may finish -300 and more ...... that gets scary

FTSE bounced from 6000 along with DOW from 12750

unfortunately Dow is currently 12565

Apologies, 12500, I'm numerically dyslexic.

Did it again! Meant 12550 need to get away from the screen!

i think you're making up numbers as you go along - lol!

12500 is where Dow finished (-275) ..... looking very bleak for London again tomorrow

breaking news ..... Intel figures now out and hated .... Dow after hours trading dumps a further 60 .......

that's ridiculous as the numbers are really not that terrible at all, or not that i can see

Even gold has dropped! Is there no safe port in a storm? Is this the end of Capitalism, the onset of a Great Depression , a changing of the guard or a great buying opportunity ?

futures 12431, thought it might bounce after hours when at 12500 and got caught out. Never bet against the trend, was that rule 1??

Was well up on gold at 3pm as well, that's gone pete tong, although managed to keep some profit. Might get its retracement to around 860ish now, and then off it will go again.

Intel, the worlds biggest chipmaker, disappointed Wall Street on Tuesday with fourth-quarter profits and sales below expectations and a cautious outlook for 2008. The company blamed problems in its non-core memory chip business for exerting a drag on its results. Its shares fell 14 per cent in after-hours trading to $19.50 its worse-than expected figures spooking the market a day after IBM had kicked off the reporting season with strong earnings, says the FT.

shows the mindset of the market ..... Intel's figures were actually well inside market estimates even if towards the lower end ...... even their forecast was scarcely bearish

when the market calms down a bit, assuming no throats cut or similar drastic action taken, i suggest it would be well worth looking to short both SOLA (especially) and WPP

Can't short SOLA on iG at the mo

interesting how the market reacts to even slightly bearish news if bearish at all with IBM. It just shows how nervous they are after citibank yesterday, and as always the negative sentiment in the media. Markets have always been too optimistic and pessimistic in the past, lets hope this time it will be the same.

For sure there are and will be great buying opportunities about, probably best to spread any purchases from now through 2008 so that I'm not too exposed if wrong.

steveo - that was rule 1, but I have been traking the ftse over the last few months, and over last three weeks it hasn't even followed the trend apart from the last two trading days, very unsporting behaviour.

Lets hope it settles down from now.