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

Futures 11135-11140

:-)

halifax, where do you access your futures figures? (or did DOW rise 84 points in 8 minutes?) Currently use CNN & Bloomberg but they sometimes differ wildly, though I assume they are time delayed.

FTSE 5236 DOW 11267

IG has live prices on its L2 platform

just noticed that gold is -$83.00!

ETX Capital also has live prices on it's platform

Harry as cynic suggests try IG.

meanwhile, all boiled over and Dow now barely ahead

cynic volatility game still being played.

Anyone catch the 80 point fall in the gold price?

no, but not surprised skinny.

what a very strange day, though i guess some profit taking today/tomorrow was inevitable in the run up to Mr B's speech ...... but all rather unnecessarily beastly now, having been very chirpy early

Huge drop on the Dax for some reason, down about 4% at one point, but now off lows.

All down to Ben B as to which way we are headed this afternoon then? Not much point buying anything until we know which way the market is heading.

I doubt there will be any QE not much Ben 10 can do while the fear factor is winning.

Irene doesn't seem to have much influence on WTI.....no oil installations in its path probably....insurers might take a knock on landfall....

Isn't Ben making a speech today? Anyone know what time?

3pm our time.