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

unemployment numbers must be at least ok as dow has suddenly reversed it's direction though still well down as i write ..... more to follow

Previous Consensus Actual
Initial Jobless Claims 398.0 408.0 400.0

Number of people filing for initial unemployment benefits falls 1,000 to 400,000 in the latest week, the government says.
Economists expected weekly unemployment claims to rise to 405,000 from last week's 398,000 claims.


Dow all over the place, zipping up/down by 50/60 points

BARC @2 down 5.9%

Trouble in the eurozone is spreading. Its going to get a lot worse before better, sorry.

Trichet's speech went down well!!

Gold @$1678

dow is now plummeting ....... had a modest dow short running but closed it for minimal profit just before going out for my sarnie ...... got that one wrong yet again

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watching "cash dow" live is riveting, but done even THINK of trying to trade it!!

I'm short gold (again) lets see if it bites me (again).

The bites hurt. lol

Skinny : you are worse than me....that is very risky...

The difference being I can't/won't lose all my money on it !

Only a month since that "triple" top!

Gold is up again....if I were you I would be temped into a POG or CEY or even HGM, AVM long.....at the moment I'm at a bad loss on POG long....but I'm convinced that it is only a matter of time before a vertical rise will come...

Your barber has been sniffing glue by the look of it....

I thought 5500 would of held.

Apparently not ! :-)

Perhaps some sacrifices to the gods might make a difference.....now who first.....politicians perhaps.....?......or a good way of clearing prisons...?

Or the market makers :-)

me me me