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

Excuse my ignorance but is a triple top positive or negative?

No your in the seconds department of lingerie......

Depends on whether it is or isn't :-) Its meant to be a bearish sign if the high isn't breached. Have a read here.

Anybody any idea which way now ?.....might break out into new highs....or pull back but can't see that happening as oil is rising fast or level out.....perhaps a slow climb higher might be the answer....

The market has the habit of doing the opposite of what most people expect. I think a lot of people were expecting something of a slump following the end of QE2 in June (and I'm not convinced it's not going to happen, TBH). But for the moment, nice rally.

Unlike the FTSE100, the FTSE250 is making new highs now



As is the FTSE Small Cap Index.. Which looks like it's broken out from a bullish ascending triangle pattern too.

i think an immediate break upwards for dow/ftse is unlikely - too far too fast - but the consolidation may not be too painful

cynic dow +93 results season will determine future progress

U.S. June jobs figure predicted to be as good as hoped. I assume 'long FTSE' is the feeling atm?

employment figures must be pretty dire as from +40, dow now shows -80

Yep previous 54 concensus 90 actual 18 !

DOW now showing +34 on Bloomberg & CNN!!! Where are you looking Cynic?
http://money.cnn.com/data/premarket/index.html

EDIT : CNN slow to update!!! :o(

Can someone give me the Dow price please?

Dow futures about -0.85% at present

"Nonfarm payroll employment was essentially unchanged in June (+18,000), and the
unemployment rate was little changed at 9.2 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor
Statistics reported today. Employment in most major private-sector industries
changed little over the month. Government employment continued to trend down."

= over 100 pts down

Hardly a shock, what is strange at mo is the US Dollar Index going down with Indeces?

Not sure the wider markets don't see it as a shock:

"US employers hired the fewest workers in nearly two years last month, pushing up the jobless rate and rattling financial markets.

Crushing hopes of a turnaround in the jobs market, companies became increasingly cautious about hiring new staff amid the continuing economic uncertainty and added just 18,000 jobs in June, the US labour department said, well below the consensus forecast of 90,000 to 120,000, and the weakest reading since September 2010.

The shock figures pushed the US unemployment rate up from 9.1% to 9.2% the highest level since December 2010, when it stood at 9.4%.

The FTSE 100, which was up about 27 points before the release of the June payroll figures, dropped more than 55 points to 5998.81 as investors fretted about the global impact of a slowdown in the world's biggest economy."

Toya - When I say hardly a shock, I was referring to the knee jerk reaction of the market on hearing how poor the Jobs numbers were. The consensus was for a good jobs report.

I must be reading the above quotation rather differently from you then Chris, as I rather thought it explained the sudden drop of the DOW.

Gees Toya haven't got a clue what you are on about. Let me try again, leading up to the US Jobs report today the consenses of opinion as I interpreted it was if the Jobs report was positive the Markets would react positively. If the jobs report was negative Markets would Tank.