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

Halifax HPI -0.9%

what is HPI?

House Price Index - released by the Halifax.

Thanks. I think Nationwide's is more important.

Yes - but they weren't released today :-)

This link is quite useful for upcoming statements.

The cascade effect :-)

What period is that over Skinny?

1 day - quite a battle at 5,000 atm.

I thank you -):

Number of people filing for initial unemployment benefits falls to a 9-month low of 381,000 in the latest week, government says.
.... hence jump in cash dow which may or may not follow through

Its very jittery out there.

On edit - a hundred off the futures just like that!

cameron
personally, i am delighted he took a lesson from mrs t and stood up to the brussels gravy-train, and seemingly a decent majority of the country also agree ..... labour and lib-dem politicians can whine and worse as much as they like, but clearly they do not read the electorate properly.

if brussels ultimately backs down re cameron's demands, then he is at liberty to reconsider the position .... however, if he had kow-towed, there would be no such option

12,000 looking decidedly vulnerable.

all looking very ugly and just possibly 11700 will be challenged once more

Evening Standard. 12 Dec.(Bloomberg Markets Mag)
Standard Chartered economist team of four came first
for accuracy in a Bloomberg survey of 354 in 11 countries.
They made the most accurate forecasts in 13 categories,
including GDP,consumer prices and personal spending.

Their latest release on Friday:-
World growth will shrink to 2.2% in 2012.
and the UK contracting by minus 1.3%

Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) unchanged.

.

cash ftse indicating -40 for the morrow

FTSE currently 5,446 - DOW 11,967

on edit.

Tomorrow's key announcements.

I wonder who is most likely to benefit. Transport schemes given 854m in government funding

The government has announced 854m in funding for 21 transport schemes across England.

It said 82.6m would be provided for a River Wear bridge in Sunderland and 76.2m for an extension of the Metropolitan Tube line to Watford.

Also included are improvements to buses in north Bristol and enhancements for the Nottingham ring road.

Many of the projects are dependent on local councils and other bodies providing extra funding.

The funding is in addition to 574m announced for 20 projects in the Autumn Statement in November.

Transport Secretary Justine Greening said the funding would "strengthen local economies".