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

Newtons Law
an object(price ?) will continue in motion and in the same direction until an outside force acts upon it.
what that force was or is or will be i have no idea.as an example it might seem that with the dow 11160 representing that force level we then have to account for momentum +/- that level before Newtons law of gravity comes into play and eventually after much pulling and pushing that oblject will become stationary which is when the forces are each equal and neutralised.that takes a great deal of time,but, it never happens of course because that object just keeps on moving.its either the bulls or the bears who have it.
nonetheless eventually the major long term force will win out.
trouble is we are all of us just minor short term players in a long term outcome.
if 11160 falls outside its major gravitational pull up then it falls into the gravitational pull down of the next major lower level. that being the case then nothing can stop it from going there until or unless another outside force acts upon it.
if it moves up thro the 11160 level then that level will act as its gravitational pull i.e. to pull it back. for it to fail it must be interacting with another level higher up that is trying to influence price by attracting it upwards.if that level succeeds then price will not fall back into the 11160 gravitational influence.
that is using horizontal support /resistance levels as an example. which may be why price trades in a range, i.e. sideways. it is treading water and going nowhere because the gravitational pull from above is being countered by the gravitational pull from below. they are cancelling each other out,neither is sufficiently strong to move price above or below the other.the movement between the ranges is simply diminishing momentum. that is horizontal supprt / resistance.
to move price out of the trading range requires an outside force to act upon it, in accordance with Newtons law of motion.
that outside force is and can be but one thing.
regards
jkd

Fab...jkd......was busy today thinking great the market is rising...come back and ???....down we go again....damn....

i'm going out for dinner, otherwise i might have a little dabble at dow long .... i shall be interested to see where it finishes!

Down ! - which is where my small short ended @10,709 + a fewwwww

ouch!! .... that was unnecessarily brutal

The FTSE must go up. Investors cannot afford to keep cash in the bank, with interest rates being held for 1-2 more years. King said today inflation will rear its head again.
I do not think it will be Thursday some how.

FTSE Tipped for strong early gains

bizarre! Stay safe my friends.

I went the other way after hours skinners, Dow just covered +203 :-)

splat :-)

ECB Monthly Report at 9 should give some direction - or not!

DOW give up after europe's concerns and want to see believe from there so europe's markets leading a pack..amazing

We will be ok after france downgrade.

We will be ok after france downgrade.

rally totally expunged - not good

5000 looking soggy again!

yup. Long FTSE again @ 4999 and Dow @ 10775

with pretty tight stops and not too much exposure i hope

out Dow +50 and some UKX +30

keeping eyes wide open, thanks Cyners