The market seems to be selling-off on the back of limited bad news imo, apart from the dollar that is.

If you can hold your nerve and apart from any short term requirements to offload poor performing stocks, I have a couple!!, my advice would be sit tight. This does not have the feel of the tech(mining!) bubble at all. Difference being there are a lot of good fundamentals, unlike in 2000 when there were a lot of over rated nothing companies.

Could well see another test of Dow 12000.

Strawbs

if it does, then the big scary Q will be whether or not it will just test or plunge straight through and keep heading south as it threatened to do yesterday

Assuming no other external factors I think it'll probably bounce on technical buying. Of course at some point the technical buyers will be out of money, so each drop is erroding support, and without a sustained move up, a plunge through is likely at some point.

In my opinion....

Strawbs.

diff to call ... am/was half tempted to take at least some profits at 12000 or thereabouts, but didn't yesterday and not sure of my mood today!

Hmmm. If it drops again, I'd look to see what Dollar/Yen is doing. If it's around 116 and falling then I'd probably wait before taking profits, as the markets seem to be tracking dollar/yen closely. It's bounced from around 115.5 a few times, so that might be a good indicator for taking profits from a short.

In my opinion........

Strawbs.

Dow singularly undecided, trading in a very narrow band ..... will be interesting to see hoa it finishes tonight, and even more so tomorrow

It appeared that nobody wanted to hold over the weekend last week, so maybe this week will be the same. Most investors with money will probably sit on the sidelines until all the volatility dies down.

Strawbs

they could be a while waiting then!

Remember that tomorrow is options expiry - nothing moving. Been watching some high beta US stocks and everything in a narrow range. Today's modest rise on the indices is also on lower volume - not sure if that's down to options expiry, or another bearish indicator.

Steve

a fairly quiet day (friday) on Wall Street with Dow only finishing off 50 ..... however, i still feel that in the shorter term Dow is heading south,certainly to 12000 which it is likely to test for the third time (please note!), and from there, not inconceivably down to 11700 ...... however, that would not (i believe) break the longer term upward pattern

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2007/03/19/ccview19.xml
Could be the next global casualty, not sure how you would go about shorting Eastern European property ?

with someone else's bargepole!

Northern Rock ( a successfull bank by anyones standards) has announced to its intermediary market its decision to enter the subprime mortgage market.
Details are not yet ready, but it looks like they are white labelling the products of Southern Pacific Mortgage Lending.
Whatever they do, it is clear they have spotted a succulent pie and they want a slice of it.
alan

on a much gloomier note, i wonder how long it will be before US or Israel with US connivance makes a pre-emptive strike against Iran .... fear it is when rather than if

The French company SPOT images has been ordered by defence minister Michele Alliot-Marie to stop diffusing any satallite pictures of lran after predessessor did the same in 2001 reg Afghanistan ..lkanhos, the first civillian satallite, with a resolution of 1 metre , sent up in 99 has been put under "shutter control by the pentagon .Under Federal law this is allowed but wasnt used in this case .The pentagon spent hundreds of millions of dollars in buying every image and destroying it ...............................

Who owns 'Ikanhos'?

USA....run by American company -Space imaging . But France has 3 of its own satts with resolution of 10 metres ....All pretty obsolete what with the new KH sats which have a resolution of 3 cm and can detect a golf ball fron several hundred km away in Space. ,,,China and lndia are both planning their own advanced systems

With markets back near the sell-off levels of February, are people convinced that the correction is over?

Personally I think the next drop will be bigger and quicker, but wonder what the sentiment is here at the moment.....

Strawbs.

FWIW, I think the next set of US economic data is critical. If that is bad, or Middle East tensions rise again, the traditional spring sell off may coincide with a fall, compounding it and forcing margin calls and herd mentality to the fore.
If these are avoided, I see a fairly benign summer, with little rise or fall.
Just IMHO.
Alan

Probably explains some of February's sell off. Another house of cards waiting for a fall........

NASD warns investors as margin debt jumps to record 321.2 bln usd

Strawbs