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

a really nasty day ... should have stayed at the golf club!

I wish I had stayed in bed.

a fair while since we had this bad a day and not what one would have liked just before a long w/e

My feelings the sooner the market closes the better.

Especially, as I have a few long SBs.

I wouldn't have thought the USA data was that bad.
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Not a good day.

The non farm figs followed by Canadian PMI and its a touch of Status Quo.

I will stick this chart up, as it gives a likely target for today, if indeed it is a non bounce day (as looks the case);

crap day anyhow..

CFTC Said to Delay Derivatives Exchange Rule Opposed by CME

Go The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission will delay a final vote on a rule governing derivatives exchanges amid internal dissent that it may restrict CME Group Inc. (CME) (CME), owner of the world’s largest futures exchange, according to four people briefed on the matter.

The rule, proposed in 2010, sought to require at least 85 percent of a contract’s trading to occur on a central market. The agency will meet on May 10 to approve a series of other exchange requirements, the CFTC said. The commissioners will delay the provision setting percentage levels, said the people, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the rulemaking process is not public. Under the proposal, an exchange would be forced to de-list a contract if it didn’t meet the 85 percent level.

The proposed rule would restrict CME’s ClearPort service, which acts as a clearinghouse for swaps traded outside of the company’s central market, Chicago-based CME said last year. ClearPort, which generates the highest fees per contract at CME, allows energy swaps, for example, to be converted into cleared futures contracts. Clearinghouses reduce risk in trades by guaranteeing trades between buyers and sellers.

“The 85 percent requirement will significantly deter the development of new products by existing exchanges like CME Group, and likewise deter any new futures exchanges from being established,” the company said in a February 2011 letter to the CFTC. The proposed level would force many of CME’s energy contracts off the company’s exchange and onto different trading platforms or into the private bilateral market, CME said.

Steve Adamske, CFTC spokesman, declined to comment.

Adequate Trading
The commission proposed the threshold to ensure that there would be adequate trading in a central market to allow for price discovery in a contract. “The commission believes that the price discovery process in the centralized market is jeopardized where off-exchange transactions become the exclusive or predominant method of establishing or offsetting positions in a particular market,” the agency said in the rule proposal.

De-listed contracts could be traded on other types of trading platforms known as swap-execution facilities. The CFTC has yet to finalize rules governing those trading systems.

“It’s appropriate we delay this to have a comprehensive discussion of trading in futures and swaps,” Scott O’Malia, a Republican CFTC commissioner, said in a telephone interview.

Economy
Putting Our Slow Jobs Recovery Into Perspective
May 04, 2012

Women Suffer Most When Government Cuts JobsDisappointing, but not shocking. The government’s report Friday that the economy created fewer jobs than expected in April—115,000—showed an unwelcome deceleration of America’s job-creating machine. Economists surveyed by Bloomberg News had a median forecast of 160,000 jobs created. In the big picture, though, the nearly 3-year-old expansion is proceeding at the same pace as the previous two. Slow recovery, in other words, is the New Normal.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the unemployment rate fell to 8.1 percent in April from 8.2 percent in March. But that wasn’t great news, because it reflected a decline in the share of the population in the labor force, to the lowest level since December 1981. When people drop out of the labor force they aren’t counted as unemployed, so the jobless rate goes down.

More bad news: Average hourly earnings were essentially unchanged, and there was no increase in the length of the average hourly workweek. One of the few bright spots is that the government revised upward its estimate of job creation in March, to 154,000 from the initially reported 120,000.

What makes this recovery seem so frustratingly slow is that the U.S. is coming out of a deeper hole this time. In the 1990-91 slump, employment fell by 1.6 million. The 2001 slump was worse: 2.7 million jobs lost. But neither comes close to the disaster of the 2007-2009 recession, when employment fell by 8.8 million.

To put it simply, if you fall down a well, you’ll climb out faster if it’s 10 feet deep than if it’s 100 feet deep.

The chart above shows job creation in the months after the economy hit bottom in each of the past three recessions. The last three low points were January 1991, November 2001, and June 2009. (The low point for the economy is designated by the National Bureau of Economic Research and doesn’t necessarily coincide with the low for employment.)

The most important takeaway from the chart is that there is no significant difference between the three recoveries in terms of rapidity. The current recovery is slow, all right, but it’s no slower than the two previous ones.

James Paulsen, the chief investment strategist at Wells Capital Management, called this pattern to my attention in a visit to the magazine this week. Paulsen has a similar chart in the 43-page deck of slides that he shows clients.

“People say the economy is broken,” Paulsen told me. “It’s not. This is the New Normal. And the New Normal is 25 years old.” The New Normal, he says, goes back to the mid-1980s, when the rate of labor-force growth notably slowed.

Growth in output is closely linked to growth in the number of workers, so when labor-force growth slowed, so did the speed limit of the economy, Paulsen says. Since the mid-1980s the economy’s growth rate has rarely exceeded 4 percent. It was 2.2 percent annually in the first quarter of this year.

“I remember in 1979, CEOs used to brag about increasing payrolls,” Paulsen says. Increasing revenue was CEOs’ top objective, so they would staff up accordingly. If they overstaffed, they could wiggle out of trouble by raising prices or counting on population growth to raise demand and bail them out. When population growth and economic growth slowed, CEOs turned more cautious and focused on raising profits through rigorous efficiency.

In contrast, hiring today is a last resort.

The good news for job seekers is that CEOs may well be forced into that last resort, because they have exhausted opportunities for efficiency improvements. Productivity–i.e., output per hour–fell at an annual rate of 0.5 percent in the first three months of 2012, the government reported May 3. It’s impossible to get more work out of the existing staff. So if demand grows now, companies will have to add workers to satisfy it.

Davai - 04 May 2012 16:36 - 8116 of 8118 edit this post

I will stick this chart up, as it gives a likely target for today, if indeed it is a non bounce day (as looks the case);



Update;

fingers x-ed that monday (dow) will see some revival as it is realised that the (racing certainty) socialist win in france will not lead to any dramatic changes in anything

following the election results in greece and france, tomorrow is looking to be vicious, with both dow and ftse cash down sharply (117 and 70 respectively) ..... usa will be trading today so watch out

I forgot that this was a holiday...

ftse
momentum below 5600 was a bail out signal - have been shut out accordingly

dow
arguably nothing to worry about so long as no momentum below 12700 (currently 12915)

Looking a bit grim for the Eurozone this week, but not sure that the Americans are going to register the Hollande victory in France as much of a big deal. Surely Hollande has to comply with ECB/IMF directives if he wants France to stay in the €, so I wouldn't be surprised if he has to heavily dilute his election promises. Once Angela gets her teeth into him............(as written in the french press this morning)...."La lune de miel politique de M. Hollande ne durera pas longtemps."

"Et la patisserie ?....vous aimez la patisserie ?".....

Sure do, rf, but have to stay fit & trim for squash, so rarely indulge, sadly!
DOW futures now -62, having been much worse earlier this morning, so hopefully they will not upset the boat today.

Well, i didn't get the exact top right, but the HH (as an irregular B wave) before down was good;

Davai - 27 Apr 2012 19:52 - 8093 of 8126 edit this post

I guess i had better duplicate my update on here!

This is a possibility and certainly gives into next week for more gains, but i still keep my downside bias once a couple of levels are reached. Just a plan for now, but here's the charts; (i hope they are self explanatory!)

The Dow;



I also maintain, that despite some vicious pullbacks, we have a fair bit lower to go yet...

cynic DOW not disastrously down so far , is this a storm in a teacup?

what ho hali ..... i really don't know; was certainly expecting the worst but seriously glad i didn't back that with cash! ...... i think the french election result was a foregone conclusion and thus (seemingly) priced in, but greece is now a serious mess and very much highlighted as such ..... i cannot believe that greece will not now be allowed to sink, but i don't pretend to understand the implications of that, either real or market-psychologicially

I hate the expression but - 'factored in' springs to mind!