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

already held them and BAO

For me - MKLW IAG SUN VOD & COST.

On edit & SOLO

encouraging start to wall street today - up about 35 at 12594 at time of writing

Looks like DOW is going to drag us down from what was a reasonable morning.

for myself, a good day with a romp by BLNX and good solid gains by AFR, VOD, MRW and GKP

I'vd had an excellent day - best of which was selling a long term holding in AV and buying it back 9p cheaper (2nd time this week).

Well, if the DOW slides back to 485 might be worth a risky long. See if it gets there and with what impetus.

nope, forget it

Amazing that the DOW is now so high and we are not really out of the difficult times yet. Assuming the markets slowly recover over the next few years, the index looks likely to go way past the 2007 high.

looks to me as if the 10K area could do with a revisit and then some serious consolidation!!

i am certainly concerned about dow and shall be even more so if 12300 is broken with any impetus - and we are now perilously close to that level

ditto ftse and 5760

Have moved about 25% of my stocks into cash until the autumn and tried to reduce the risk factor in whats left (i.e. looking for income rather than growth). I still think the end of QE11 is going to impact the market and with certain countries putting up interest rates(U.K. soon to follow), there may well be a move back to savings rather than equities.

The FED will not suddenly remove liquidity from the market, this will be managed over a period of 2-3 years. As long as there no QE3 they should be able to manage inflation.

i'm sure i've said it before but i'm happy to repeat ..... the chemical industry is a good barometer for world economies ..... it started a few months back but is growing stronger; that is the shipment of chemicals which of course form the base of most things that we use .... the clear implication is restocking

As I have also said before, I have shares in YULC & AZEM but they are not exactly going anywhere at the moment, so not sure that your conclusion is spread evenly across the chemicals industry. You may well be correct, but sadly not in the stocks I own!

we work internationally so have a much broader picture

Boast boast.,.

I would say something worth keeping an eye on is PMI (purchasing managers index) figures, which are mostly now showing some signs of slowing growth. http://www.minyanville.com/businessmarkets/articles/Eurozone-PMI-germany-economy-euro-eurozone/5/24/2011/id/34739

now look at south and central america ..... an extract from a much longer article .....

IMF world economic outlook (april 2011)
growth in the region is projected to average 4.75% in 2011 and 4.25% in 2012 ..... which 0.66% higher than forecast in october 2010 .... greater confidence in the strength of global recovery and improved prospects for commodity prices

cynic percentages are always pretty meaningless.