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

Well done cynic you picked a winner, may I ask what the fxxk that has to do with trading UKX, would I be wrong in saying as Eric Morecambe made famous 'NOT A LOT' :O) Looking at tomorrows economic data unless I'm badly mistaken UKX and Dow going to get roasted, but then again we are dealing with crazy yanks and an equally crazy market so they will probably rocket. Firmly on sidelines a casino at mo.

Not sure about friday. The slovaks positive vote: "The action now means that every Eurozone member has approved the plan to increase the fund to 440bn and give it the ability to purchase sovereign bonds, as well as granting it powers to extend emergency lending." Maybe the temporary feelgood factor will kick in again???

For how long Harry, hope you are right and all our troubles will be over, pigs might fly(no pun intended). Temporary sounds like a good call.

chris - nothing, but there is nowhere sensible to post here on us stocks ..... btw, "not a lot" was paul daniels

Very temporary CC! Quite a few stocks seemed to have been marked up at the open and have now already drifted off. Not sure if that's right as some of the streaming data looked iffy.

Marvelous, internet connection gone awol at home in local library for catch up.

cynic - quite right re Paul Daniels :O)

Harry - This aft will be interesting, down to those crazy yanks as per.

Retails sales 1.1% v consensus 0.8%

Does anyone know the schedule for today's 'fix the world' meeting ?

US consumer sentiment sags in Oct, expectations sour

Oct 14 (Reuters) - U.S. consumer sentiment unexpectedly slumped in early October as worries about declining incomes drove consumer expectations back down to the lowest level in more than 30 years, a survey released on Friday showed.

The Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan's preliminary reading on the overall index on consumer sentiment sagged to 57.5 from 59.4 the month before. It fell short of the median forecast of 60.2 among economists polled by Reuters.

I thought the G20 meeting was over the weekend?

Yes - I think you are right - I had a quick look earlier and couldn't find a timetable - bloody internet - useless :-)

A downgrade for Spain before the G20 talks could put them back in crisis talks.

From earlier S&P downgrades Spains credit rating

Thanks skinny.

Liam Fox quits as defence secretary

The DOW doing very nice.

.

Jeremy Gaunt, European Investment Correspondent, 12:43, Saturday 15 October 2011

LONDON (Reuters) - The coming week is likely to be crucial for the direction of financial markets until year-end, with euro zone stability at stake as well as the latest test of the one bright spot for investors, corporate earnings.

In the case of the euro zone, there is talk of a "binary" moment next weekend in which a European leaders summit either comes up with the goods to assuage concerns about the debt crisis or disappoints again.

The former might well be taken as a reason for a sustained rally in riskier assets such as equities. The latter would almost certainly spark a sell off

Loads of results out this week in the U.S.
CNN - The week ahead includes reports from nearly half of the Dow's 30 components, including Intel (INTC, Fortune 500), McDonald's (MCD, Fortune 500) and General Electric (GE, Fortune 500), and 96 members of the S&P 500 including, Apple (AAPL, Fortune 500), Southwest Airlines (LUV, Fortune 500) and Chipotle Mexican Grill (CMG).

Company earnings are expected to have climbed 23% in the third quarter of 2011, according to earnings tracker Thomson Reuters. Revenues of the companies in the benchmark index are expected to have risen 10%.

Wells Fargo (WFC, Fortune 500), Citigroup (C, Fortune 500), Bank of America (BAC, Fortune 500), Goldman Sachs (GS, Fortune 500), Morgan Stanley (MS, Fortune 500), US Bancorp (USB, Fortune 500), as well as some regional banks.

not a pretty sight for tomorrow - dow down 250
very glad i took my profits this afternoon in GOOG and AAPL, but that will be smalll comfort i fear