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

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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

We are doomed


http://youtu.be/w7RIgs3eygo

FWIW, I have a support line on the DOW at 11378, low of the day (at the moment) is 11388 and currently bouncing at 11432.5 (2003)

Well there's a funny old thing, DOW bounced off 11378 (11377.5 to be precise). 50-60 pts available for those with an agile trigger finger!

Unfortunately not me.

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AAPL
if you have access to US markets, a little dabble in this one could easily reap dividends even in the very short term - my own money will be married to mouth
numbers are out after the close today and should be very strong
though sp is at the year's high, it's still very cheap on fundamentals

"it's still very cheap on fundamentals" applies to great number of U.K. stocks as well, but sentiment is the driver at the moment and that is downwards.
Would that be a tentative ramp for AAPL Mr C? I thought that was frowned upon? ;o)

I quite like Apple - I did think it would suffer after the death of Steve Jobs.

ISG ex dividend tomorrow - 10p - I've had a limit buy in for a while, but it doesn't look like it is going to get hit.

Don't you have to be on the register a couple of days prior to qualify for divi?

No - if you buy today, you will receive the dividend.

Do you fancy it Harry?

I would have to sell ABG (at a profit) to free up cash. But, as you know, I am always looking for good divi's. Also, is ISG likely to tank at the open (or pre-open) once it goes ex-divi? (Graph suggests it will).

Yes - me also - I'm just a bit loathed to chase it atm - I quite like the company though, and it will stay on my "dividends to buy" list.

Harry - if I knew that answer, I certainly wouldn't be posting here :-)

harry - if you want to interpret it that way, please feel free :-), but at least i put money with mouth, albeit that i did it a bit early today

Here come those crazy yanks - Bernanke speaks this evening.