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.

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

Looks like the February high on the FTSE has been taken out today - in theory that means there is no top in place at the moment.

Steve

No fall this time...the economy is robust according to Gordon Brown...the future's orange.

in that case, with luck GB will be Tangoed!

Plenty of US data this afternoon....

Now the indices are back to pre sell-off levels.....what's the betting they'll tank again... :-)

Think higher than expected inflation and poor housing numbers will be the worst case scenario. If our inflation popped this month then you've got to wonder if the US might just do the same.

In my gloomy opinion....

Strawbs.

juat hit new highs - i suppose the only way is down .......NOT!! my glass is STILL half full, though i agreee there will be a bit of down side.

c'mon glass half empty people, where are you, there were loads a few weeks ago!!!

Much to my annoyance, I sold out in late February - however when looking at longer term (i.e. monthly) charts the uptrends were not broken, both in the indices and the individual stocks I was holding. This is a result of over-riding my trading rules by trying to predict what will happen, and by doing this I left lots of money on the table. I will not be selling out again until these charts show that the trend is over.

Steve

I also sold in February, but even though some of my former holdings have gone much higher since, I'm happy to have taken the money off of the table. At the end of the day, it comes down to personal circumstances I guess.

Strawbs.

Better to be safe then sorry.

Very true. I think it's also important to back your judgement call. I think markets are set for a big fall, and a near record high on the DOW looks like a good point for things to go wrong. Just as FTSE 7000 fell short and led to a falling market, I wonder if DOW 13000 might just do the same. I sleep (and work) happier knowing most of my cash is in the bank now. If others feel there's more money to make, then that's their call, and I wish them luck.

In my opinion.......

Strawbs.
Less of a glass half empty, and more of a bank account mostly full kind of investor. :-)