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

truly horrible at the moment and Dow struggling to stay above 12000 again ...... world has now decided to catch fright that m'facturing is falling

Hmm - small long @5597 - gold $1642

with gold roaring ahead, it is a nice pipedream to imagine gold producers doing likewise

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Gold @1647

bleak tomorrow is a severe understatement .... dow now struggling to hold 11900 and ftse showing -69 at 5640 ..... likely to be even worse in the morning

Gold now @1653

dow closes 11865 and still falling just after the bell
my asc short isn't going to save me many pennies, that's for sure

CMC now offering 1656.6 - 1657 for Gold and Dow 11,850 - 11,854

that's spot on the money ..... i'll need to check, but i recollect that the real horror start when 11780 is broken badly

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fingers crossed that this morning's US employment data at least meets forecast

looks as though those numbers were ok even if not spifflicating ..... will c+p when showing on cnn

The jobs recovery slowed for a third month in a row, according to two reports out Wednesday.
Private sector employers added 114,000 workers in July, far lower than the 145,000 jobs added in June, according to a report by payroll processing firm ADP.
While that number beat economists' forecasts for 100,000 additional jobs, it is also taken with a grain of salt by some economists, since ADP's figures have differed wildly from government data this year.
Meanwhile, a separate report showed more firms are opting to downsize, rather than add to their payrolls.
The number of planned job cuts surged to a 16-month high in July -- rising 60% in July to 66,414 from June's 41,432, according to outplacement consulting firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

DOW futures still in +tve territory thankfully. Non-farm employment change figures on friday, so still not out of the woods yet.

800 jobs to go at sellafield and closing, since japan quake.

Bye bye 5600

so much for having been nearly back at b/e for the day ...... this is all looking very bleak with all US indices having broken key levels, and ftse now too

Apparently if the DOW finishes down today it would be the 9th straight session of doing so which is a record for over 100 years!

With the breakdown of the AIM/small caps some 3 mnths ago, this has been on the cards for some time.