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

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.

amazed one can't short SOLA at IG ..... is that S/B or CFD? ..... have not tried, but implication is that they have a lot of clients who already are ..... unless there are no willing lenders of stock

Coming up today:
"Financial firms JP Morgan Chase (JPM, Fortune 500) and Wells Fargo (WFC, Fortune 500) are both due to report their quarterly results before the market open Wednesday.
On the economic front, the government is due to release its Consumer Price Index, a key measure of inflation, at 8:30 a.m. ET.
Also today, the latest data for Industrial Production and Capacity Utilization will released. The Federal Reserve is also due to release its Beige Book of economic conditions."

DOW futures currently flat, so presumably everyone waiting to see what the news is going to be.

flat!!!! .,.... that has to be the understatement of the year ..... Dow indications are currently -86, which it has to be said is a modest recovery from earlier

JP Morgan Chase (JPM, Fortune 500) reported fourth-quarter earnings that fell short of Wall Street's estimates due to a $1.3 billion write-down on subprime assets. The company's net income fell to $3 billion for the quarter.

interestingly, following the above news, Dow indicators have recovered some more and show only -50 .... perhaps the perception is that Fed will have to cut rates at least 0.5% and before the next meeting at end January

Apologies. On the CNN site the DOW futures are & were showing 0.00 but I think that is a glitch on their system.