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

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St. Ledger day 10th Sept '11. Traditionally time for markets to pick up........we shall see!

Big week for data next week for the nervous markets. Ben Bernanke the fed res chairman gives a speech Friday for the future prospects of the us economy.
Preliminary purchasing managers index data for Germany and France, will indicate how they are doing. Mortgage and job figures from the USA. Gdp figures for the uk second quarter. Next week being an important week to see how Europe and the US are doing. Lets hope for some better news.

"S&P 500 E-mini Futures / SPY Charts demonstrating a tradable bottom has been formed. The US markets could lead the FTSE, DAX and CAC higher...." - interesting chart analysis - http://www.barchart.com/headlines/story.php?id=1613920

DOW futures were -70 this morning & now +143!!! Was expecting the FTSE rise to run out of steam, but may now see it continue for a while.

but it is of possible concern that dow is now only +26 ..... fingers crossed i guess

Sell in May and go away, come back next Easter may be the right call.

I see gold breached $1910 late on - currently @$1903

Fear and speculation skinny. The gold bubble is getting bigger. The bigger the bubble the bigger the bang.

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German ZEW August current conditions 53.5 vs 90.6 in July

all very skittish, which is no great surprise ..... very glad i had the sense to pocket a reasonable profit from dow longs first thing this morning when cash dow was about 11025

Eyes down for 3pm!

Shorting ATM is so easy it's scary..

Manufacturing index -10 against -1 for July.

New homes sales drop for the 3rd month.

Crap figures, Dow/S&P/Nasdaq rallies. What was that about easy? :0

The regional manufacturing indexes all seem to be pointing to some fairly negative US PMI figures for next month.

Just gone short DOW @10,979

I have a spreadbet to short the DOW to 9899

UBS downgrades Autonomy Corporation from buy to neutral, target price raised from 2100p to 2550p.

LOL.

I assume your 'short DOW' got stopped out pdq?