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

clearly a major announcement out from US ..... Dow indications +175 and more in a second

0.75 Cut by FED
2517

0.75 should give a major bounce, hold on to your hats.

The futures confirm that spitfire43, but how long will it last, this is an emergency cut, the dollar will weaken much further imo, good news for their debt I suppose, but bad news for dollar earners.
2517

Dow therefore indicated to open ONLY down about 350 or so!!
First thing, indications were -700

Just traded the DOW for a 70 pt profit ,,it was rather like running away from a gun ,,scary but great fun , before you say it cynic. your right it's gambling !!

Hopefully a bounce will help some traders to lighten position's, but I still think the outlook would turn negative again after a limited bounce. Will have to wait on DOW.

DOW back over -500. Clearly going to be very volatile.
2517

Dow indicators all over the place ...... now showing to open -450, but reality could be anything, given BoA and Wachovia worse than dire figures against Fed 0.75% rate cut + likely further sweeteners to follow via White House with full bipartisan support

probably prevented a possible repeat of the 1987 crash but with it already being fully discounted will have limited effect and will probably be negative short term. Only took the FTSE about 15 minutes to get back in negative terrtory. Never seen an enviroment like this with so many short term opportunities to make money

another rate cut expected on the 30th

The 0.75 % cut will help in the short term, but I guess it will take the rest of the year to recover.

that is unimportant ..... stability is the key .... a steady recovery would be just fine

Agreed...

I G Index have shut their dealing platform ,when i rung they said we have a problem with the feed , lying b*****s .

Wall st running the US economy , may as well do away with the Fed

jimmy .... cfds or sb? ..... there was a prob of kinds with cfds earlier, but has been fine now for 1-2 hours

Sb's,,,, it's on now cynic ,had another nibble at the dow ,i'm going to get burned at some point ,but i've a fair few points in the bag now .

DOW struggling to get back through 12000

always likely to be the case as it's a pretty key number and of course Dow is recovering from an effective 700 point fall from Friday close as at 08:00 this morning