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

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

.

good call or what???!!!
shame i hadn't the balls to be any braver ..... now let's see if it can hold ..... already 11250 after perhaps 10 minutes

this is as nuts as it all was the other way - as i write dow is 11390

11490 now.

just to cheer you all on a saturday morning ..... S&P have just downgraded US to AA+

not half glad i closed all my long index positions last night

Apparently the same status as Belgium!!!

Yes thanks for that!

Nobody seems to know the effect it will have on the SM.

I presume before that we were going up but now?

John Chambers, chairman of S&P's sovereign ratings committee, said it could have been avoided if the political stalemate over the US debt ceiling had been resolved earlier.
"The first thing it could have done is raise the debt ceiling in a timely matter so the debate would have been avoided to begin with," he said.

exactly so, and all one can add is that the american politicians (i think primarily the republicans) have portrayed themselves as the typical irresponsible, self-seekers that is the hallmark of most of their ilk

Cynic - That US downgrade, was it announced prior to US close 9.30pm Friday or overnight, this morning?