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

clearly the markets remain far from convinced that any recovery today is very likely

Surely it's all down to the non-farm figures expected later? Wouldn't want to anticipate them, but may be a late ray of sunshine today.

you're right, and i shall continue to manfully resist the siren calls of the current recovering prices until after 13:30

I've heard that if the US markets stabilise then we will probably recover some ground as people won't want to be short going into the weekend just in case the Euro politicians get their act together and have some sort of plan by Monday.

Conversely, if the US drops again then we could have market capitulation. In that case I could see a suspension looming although for a trader it may be manor from heaven!

There have been opportunities even with shares this am.

AFR (if nimble enough); PDX; CHAR; VGM; RKH; POG and HOIL spring to mind.

someone dropping bricks on you then DD??
and yes, you could have successfully traded this morning if you had been supremely brave and/or foolish, especially on the indices ..... in fact, in closing my ftse short, i accidentally double-clicked so ended up long and made a couple of shillings that way - which is now banked

Yes I am brave here.

Most of the time it does indeed slip into foolishness but there were too many opportunites yesterday and today to miss.

So far CHAR is the one that has paid for my therapy!

Only -98 now :-)

Closeds a small long +80 - seems to be coming off now.

clearly employment numbers were at least reasonable as shown by jump in indices

Double the number of jobs created than expected. Big bounce, followed by some relief profit taking possibly?

NON Farm.
Previous 46.0 consensus 91.0 actual 117.0

Thank god!

U.S. stock futures turn sharply higher following a much better-than-expected report showing 117,000 jobs were added in July.

i've been stopped out of just about all my longs at varying scaling down and out levels during this week.thank god for stop losses and money management.
was fortunate that i didnt get any bad overnight gaps working against me but that could all change come monday.
just left with BOK and QED at moment now.
good luck to all
regards
jkd

so glad i went out for 20 minutes - can't believe that

long Dow @ 11,336....

markets are nuts, but 'twas always thus

in theory, 11160 is the support for dow, and we are now very close to that

.