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

Wish I had the foresight to go short on ftse yesterday, but I'm only blessed with hindsight. For traders who have shorts still open, I think you will have a very good day. Good luck.

with hindsight, i wish i had had the balls to keep running both my Dow and FTSE shorts, but in truth that would have been totally stupid, as the market could just as suddenly have changed direction ...... a profit is a profit!

am inclined to think that the indices will bounce today, but that may well be just hope over expectation, and certainly the charts give no solace.

nevertheless, because i am a total tosser (no comment please!!), i have taken out a small FTSE long, though shall be monitoring constantly.

Going to be very interesting for gold and dollar, if BOE or ECB cut rates

doubt very much that either will cut ..... why should they? ..... further, it is dangerous for not only will it signal further major underlying problems, but also stoke inflation say 2 years down the line

DOW futures currently -24. Are you still long the FTSE, cynic? Brave call either way.

yes .... but only opened that pos this morning (ditto Dow) ...... FTSE very nicely in the money

How things change. DOW now +14. The midas touch, cynic!

i wish! ..... if i was that clever, may have left yesterday's shorts running ..... anyway, any profit helps offset paper losses on my long portfolio ...... that said, i really not like the feel of the markets at all and am trying to persuade myself to gently liquidate at least part of my holdings

Rates held at 5.75. 12.45 for ECB

strange day ..... FTSE was pretty much unchanged throughout despite gyrations in USA ...... DOW was inicated to be down quite a lot, up quite a lot, tanked at opening and is now uncertain what to do with itself.

for myself, i closed FTSE long with a reasonable profit, but left DOW long open (there are today's FTSE profits to play with!) and keep my fingers crossed that at the very least we shall see a DCB by close of biz.

What prey tell is a DCB ?

Dead Cat bounce!

Dead Cat Bounce ..... unlike JCB which just digs a bigger hole

DOW and NASDAQ charts are interesting (S&P is worse than dire!) in that both a just nudging potential support levels, DOW at 200 dam and NASDAQ on 50 dma

DOW testing the 200 DMA again at 13135. Could be another difficult day for the FTSE tomorrow, imo.

When FTSE closed down 3.2 at 6381 Friday, the DOW was down 60, but then went on to finnish 223 down at 13042. If FTSE follows DOW as usual Monday morning it should open 110 down at 6271, if so I may take a small long on FTSE looking for a 50 point gain in the morning. Notwithstanding any adverse news.

I have noticed this pattern with FTSE before, it seems to drift before the DOW opens.

Any thought's...........

Ignore preceding thread, I was working on wrong data, FTSE closed 77 points down at 6304, not 3.2 points down. Hence I have no long positioned planned.

I find that there is often a reversal after 10 to 15 minutes of trading, possibly due to widening bid offer spreads, digesting the futures. This was certainly in evidence for FTSE on Thursday and Friday and on Dow on Friday. Have to monitor carefully though or things can go very pear shaped, safest to use a trailing stop loss.

Falcothou

Thankyou, I will certainly be on the look out for a suitable entry point, I normally use a static stop/loss and adjust myself if I'm sat in front of computer. Will look into a trailling stop/loss as well. I'm fairly new to using CFDs so only taking small positions at the moment.