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

Blimey - LLOY touched 10 bob at open.

if i'd had some spare csah, barc at 208p on wednesday was a good buy....

BB - absolute stonking bounce - I traded it Wednesday & yesterday - unfortunatley not today.

even RBS has been worth following!

Closed Ftse long @5917.8 + 34 that's me for the day away to play golf. Edit that was a futures bet with Worldspreads save any confusion.

Looks like the euphoria short lived as DOW losing ground atm:
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- U.S. stocks were poised for a lackluster open Friday, with futures losing momentum after Caterpillar released disappointing earnings (Also Honeywell and Verizon).

Premarkets have had a volatile morning, as investors weigh the latest batch of corporate earnings, along with the latest bailout plan for Greece and U.S. debt ceiling talks.

Dow Jones industrial average (INDU), S&P 500 (SPX) and Nasdaq (COMP) futures hovered around breakeven ahead of the opening bell."

Short term, sharp dip on the DOW whilst they thrash out a debt ceiling deal, then a relief rally late next week?

politicians jockeying for mid-term election votes are so tiresome and irresponsible ...... it is 99.9% certain that some deal will be thrashed out in US, as failure to do so would lose these politicos an awful lot more than a few votes

Not much going on except that the price of gold has gone up again.....the market (or whatever) can't hold the gold shares back much longer : the unhedged ones will just have to rocket sooner or later.

Out of my short -10 and reversed long @1601 - a bit clueless really - bloody yanks!

Just reversed @1618 - surely the yanks will sort something soon!

Some cheery reading about what might happen if they don't! http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financialcrisis/8659658/What-happens-if-the-US-defaults.html

Well Banks & Insurance companies severely under the cosh today.

soft targets for shorters, market has already discounted settlement in US.

We're all doomed.

.

muppets 6200 coming soon!

dull innit, but if you think a sharp bounce will come, i'm sure you're right for there's no way the idiot politicos will actually hazard US falling into default

cynic even if that happens it's not the end of the world,life goes on, some think rating agencies are so far up their own arseoles they can't see the "wood from the trees".

true in principle but in practice i daren't think of the quantum of collapse one would see in world markets, and continuing reverberations for a very long time too