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

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?

Well mine did -30. I was tempted to go in higher, but my younger daughter turned up and informed me I'm going to be a grandad - so I was somewhat distracted!

at 14?

cynic ?

Dow up nearly 300 pips, mental those yanks :O)

closed 11162 - am quite tempted to short o'night but shall resist

Moody's cuts Japan's debt rating on deficit concerns

Japan opens $100bn fund to help firms beat yen strength

all very quiet ..... let's hope it stays that way as i think we all need a breather or two .... but here's hoping that POG's figures tomorrow promote the same sort of excitement as seen with TLW and WPP this morning

And yet Admiral's figures were blisteringly good and the sp falls 7%! So not sure if good news is always reflected as sp increase.

cash Dow has jumped 40/50 points so it's a good bet that the durable goods numbers were better than expected ...... shall post same here when they are apparent

Durable Goods Orders ex Transportation previous 0.6% consensus -0.2% actual 0.7%
Durable Goods Orders previous-1.3% consensus 2.1% actual 4.0%

DOW is currently -90 (CNN) which looks odd if the goods figures are correct.

it was a fair bit worse before the figs HC and as ever, perhaps yesterday's push was just a tad too frothy!

cash Dow is 11150 (-15)

Harry dow is currently -6.