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

US New Home Sales 321k v consensus 316K previous 307K

i was hoping that nice sell off will hold but all that bailout nonsense and even bigger ECB scam holding market up...

Are we there yet?

Ooops


US Core Durable Goods Orders m/m -3.2% v consensus 0.0% previous 2.2%


US Durable Goods Orders m/m -4.0% v consensus -0.8% previous 3.0%

Just closed a FTSE short +25 - I thought it may drop more on those figures.

US CB Consumer Confidence 70.8 v consensus 63.1 previous 61.5

Which one is more important, if any at all?

Take your pick - Today's calendar

EUR 3-y LTRO 530B v previous 489B

ecb scam 2.0...immediate sell off was nice but next uptick was scary, all in all come down and hopefully down continue

Big Ben at 3pm !

It's a mega slow day today on the markets! If it gets any slower I may be forced to go & do some gardening! Even the weeds are growing faster than my portfolio!

Isn't it just! All I want is for the CW. or MCHL bid to appear this afternoon.....

US ISM Manufacturing PMI 52.4 v consensus 54.6 previous 54.1

should have taken my modest profit this morning, but took a modest loss instead and have now gone long dow ..... 10940 is now building as a support rather than a resistance and economic news is at least fairly positive

For those interested in a punt and I mean a real small gamble : OXS on a positive update !.

Bernanke: Economic recovery 'uneven'

Before the Senate on Thursday, Bernanke repeated testimony he gave to members in the House the day before, calling the job market "far from normal" and referring to the the recovery as "uneven and modest by historical standards."
While he was far from upbeat about the recovery, he made no comments implying the Fed would be considering a third round of asset purchases as a way to stimulate the economy.

we await the results from "super tuesday" should determine the direction of wall street over the summer.

Morning all - just popped in to say hello.

I stopped trading the indices a while back as I was losing more bthan I was winning. But - i decided to have one more go and put a £10 sb on the FTSE at 5420 which I finally cashed in yesterday at 5920 (albeit by mistake) recovering all of my previous losses plus some.

I am determined now to stay out as I consider the last gain of over £5000 more luck than judgement.

Good luck to you all - I will pop in from time to time.

o/t - probably my best investment over the last 12 months has been in AMER - have been from the 2p days, now at 26p - with more to come imv - maybe worth having a look if you are into oilies.

You should write a book - well done :-)