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

7.40am and -75 at present

those with strong nerves (not me), could already have made a good turn on both dow and ftse ...... i shall probably just sit like a rabbit in the headlights

Very easy to do today as it is impossible to know how the swings are going to happen.

Very high chance of being burnt today!

fully concur ..... with gold up $60 it would be nice to think that mining shares at least will buck the trend, but on recent record, fat chance

pretty much en passant, i note that cash dow dropped to the key 11160 - indeed a bit below - and has now bounced firmly back above it for the second time (did so during normal US trading on friday)

riveting stuff, but am glad to say, i find it easy to do nothing .... as shrewd DD says, it'll be very easy to get badly burnt

Thanks dreamcatcher for the ratings system....here we go again......I'm not enjoying these markets anymore, I wonder why ?....

Are credit agencies reliable enough?!

AAA rating company like LB can go bust LB, but junk rated companies can do well and jump 100% a year.


I think the credit rating agencies are the problem - they probably invested too much on the negative side.

A little rebound at the moment but how long will it last.....I might avoid my account being downgraded to :"a little choccy biccy account" if the rise persists....

and that is why "sit on your hands" is surely the best policy today and perhaps for the next week

Ahoj, credit rating agencies were instrumental in the whole financial crisis. Most famously, sub prime mortgage backed CDO's that were choc full of crap that was almost certain to default, were given AAA ratings, only finally being downgraded when the whole lot was imploding. Whether they simply didn't understand what they were rating, or gave into commercial pressures to give the ratings that their client's wanted I don't know. Probably a bit of both. The whole debacle severely damaged their reputations though.

Picked up one or two bargains this morning at ridiculous prices and will now sit on my hands like you say for probably the next couple of weeks.....

i wish you well, but already that rally is fading quite fast - but as you say, there probably are some bargains out there

RRL the other day,....AFR, AEX, GKP even RKP......there are so many, BLNX is tempting but already in.....perhaps a rise is coming in the run up to the christmas period.....badly need one...and I forgot about the gold stocks....POG, CEY, HGM...MIRL etc...

i agree about BLNX but my inclination would be towards more defensive stocks with good yield - e.g. VOD

.

The rise this am was short covering.

Interestingly, hardly any tiddlers went up which showed to me that we were about to fall to earth again.

One wonders when the large miners will have bottomed as their charts look horrendous.

yes was just wondering the same thing dd, selling pressure is immense on them. Nipping in and out of XTA. Just took some @ 982.9

I'm still not convinced we know the full answer for this drop.

Whilst to an extent it has been on the cards for a few months, the rapid fall of the miners makes me wonder whether there is an institution in trouble.

There might just be....because these merchant banks and such work on leverage so if these drops go past a certain point you could put one or two in real, real trouble....

Miners are in a risk sector, so they are not going to be a popular investment atm. Also commodity prices are down; Copper, aluminium, zinc, lead and nickel are all down, so that is going to be reflected in the extractor's sp.