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

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

one would need to be a confirmed masochist to describe that as a fun day, but we seem to have pulled back from the brink and some of my stocks are even back in profit!

it would be cheering indeed if Dow could finish above 12000, but even say 100 odd points below (where we are now) would scarcely be the disaster envisaged first thing this morning when 11240 was indicated

I'll second that cynic, currently buying wall street open position, had a very good day indeed with the FTSE. It has gone over the 12000 mark on several ocassions. 12300 I think it'll rebound back to by the end of the week..

is that rebound back up or down, or is that a politician's answer?
anyway, will happily settle for 11971 finish for Dow, though above 1200 would have been a nice bonus.
after hours shows a modest decline (79 points) and it will be interesting to see how F/E now reacts
an interesting day ahead, hopefully less scary than today

One of these days, I'll have a small go at this Ftse or Dow long and short lark.....

a reminder to myself as much as everyone else ..... the markets remain fragile and volatile in the extreme ..... while it is reasonably certain that BoE will drop interest rates in a couple of weeks, Mervyn King was quite right to flag that inflation is raising its head .... was also concerned to read that a lot of Amis seemingly think Fed will cut rates yet again next week ..... imo, that really would be a panic signal, but will Dow also take it amiss if this does NOT happen?

Dow immediate top is prob 12200

Interesting you should say that, cynic, 'cos I heard this morning that the reason for the decline this morning is due to the release of information that the MPC voted not to reduce interest rates in Jan by 8-1 & that the maximun they are likely to reduce rates in feb is by only a quarter of 1%. They appear to be more concerned over keeping inflation in check than appeasing the credit market. I wouldn't be surprised to see the FED regret their cut yesterday, or at least the size of the cut.

motorola!

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- Motorola Inc. on Wednesday reported an 84% decline in fourth-quarter profit, as it shipped fewer wireless phones and suffered a steep loss in its struggling handset division.

"mind the gap"

nasdaq yesterday

Pfizer beats earnings guidance. Not all bad news.

won't be remotely enough to give Dow a hard-on!