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

not yet, but life goes on and for some what is going on in japan and the m.e. does not impact on their businesses. the yanks always overreact, it takes them a couple of days to catch up.

m/e is much more likely to affect everyone than japan due to the oil factor

Presumably someone is going to do very nicely out of the rebuilding effort in Japan when the problems are sorted? I saw that Caterpillar was already being tipped as a benficiary. It seems that 45% of all semiconductors come from Japan so maybe other manufacturers are picking up the shortfall in capacity, which should boost their y/e figures.

Komatsu should do well.

you'll be promoting West China Cement soon - what happened to that one?

for those who don't know Komatsu is a major manufacturer of heavy earth moving equipment.

Looks like FTSE will open down another 100 Thursday. DOW down 274 18.22 Wed

Bernard - you never answer the Q, but i'll try again .... have you married money with mouth? .... if you did earlier, then you are, currently at least, nursing a considerable bruise as dow now only(??) down 180 and ftse cash -29 since close

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as always, the great fear is the uncertainty and it is that that is primarily driving the market south .... libya and m/e problems in genreal seem to have been put on the back-burner

bernard stays stumm as always ..... meanwhile, NY has had a horrid day with dow showing +/-11630 after hours and cash ftse -36 ..... my guess is that tomorrow may well open worse than that

glad i took money off the table again late this afternoon, but probably not enough

As I have said before, this has been a long time coming.

The AIM market and in fact many of the larger stocks stopped moving several weeks ago which spelled danger in a similar way when the sea disappears before a Tsunami.

I would suggest that any hedge funds left standing and other institutions have been out of the market for some time. It makes me smile when I see people on here say that a particular share will be miles higher in a few weeks time. They are either just trying to blatantly pump it or they have no idea about the general dynamics in the market at present.

DOW down 274 18.22 Wed this price was correct at the time of posting yes it did recover.

Price was taken from ETX Capital live platform. 18.22 GMT Wednesday 16/03/11

So Mr C*** it is easy for you to post after the event to try to discredit me.

I suppose all your trades were Blue again.

I think he is asking you if you had a position open (Spread bet or CFD)("have you married money with mouth?"), not questioning your data.

The answer is no Harry, no position just observation.

no i did not have a short or any other dow position running .... i merely asked you the same question ..... if you never put dosh and gob together it's easy to make whatever call you like for there is no risk attaching

for myself and well after dow closed, i fully expected the london market to open horribly down and was very thankful to have taken money off the table yesterday - as posted at the time

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and by the by, i have (rashly?) bought back into BLNX, HOIL and TLW this morning

So Mr C made a wrong call. Must be a first for you.

as you decline to answer the question, it is a reasonable assumption that your gob and wallet are disassociated ...... as for me, i often make bad calls and usually post as much ..... and you? .... whoops! a senior moment - i forgot you don't actually back with bucks

What question ?? Mr.c***

did you back your prognostication with real money that ftse would open -100 this morning - clearly you have short-term memory loss too

Mr. C*** Wake up, and read the posts, the answer to your question is in there. Are you on medication ??

I bought FTSE and Dow after the close last night at 5561 and 11,620 respectively as the drop looked overdone on a short term basis to me. I have closed both out this morning as markets are so news-flow driven atm that there may well continue to be some big swings for a while yet.