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

GBP Retail Sales m/m 0.1% consensus 0.6% previous 1.5%

USD Unemployment Claims 386K consensus 367K previous 350K

Spain sells 3 billion euros of bonds, yields hit new highs

MADRID | Thu Jul 19, 2012 2:28pm BST
(Reuters) - Spain's Treasury sold 3 billion euros (2.35 billion pounds) of medium-term debt on Thursday, at the top end of its target amount, but paid euro-era record yields on the five year paper as investors remain unconvinced by austerity measures and growth prospects.

Spain had aimed to sell between 2 billion and 3 billion euros of the debt.

The Treasury sold 1.4 billion euros worth of bonds maturing October 31, 2014 with a 3.3 percent coupon, at an average yield of 5.204 percent compared to 4.335 percent last month, at a bid-to-cover ratio of 1.9 after 4.3 previously.

USD Existing Home Sales 4.37M consensus 4.64M previous 4.55M

USD Philly Fed Manufacturing Index -12.9 consensus -7.9 previous -16.6

USD CB Leading Index m/m -0.3% consensus -0.1% previous 0.3%

dow possibly blinking at 13005 level and shying away for now ..... tomorrow being friday could be interesting

Yes - not much in the way of big figures out tomorrow - GB Public Sector Net Borrowing and Canadian CPI being the main ones.

hairy scary week, but all things considered, has finished pretty well for me

GBP Public Sector Net Borrowing 12.1B consensus 11.8B previous 15.6B

greece and spain resume their roles as serial party-poopers with the market being hammered from the off ...... de facto, this will trigger a lot of forced sales and similar ..... let's hope a bit of sanity quickly returns

as an aside, for i know that few of you hold stocks in usa, but AAPL could be a good bet today ..... AAPL numbers are due out imminently and will almost certainly be very good ..... at friday's close, they were already about 5% off their high of a few months ago, and general market malaise is likely to see them weaken again, at least at the open

i knew the markets would be bashed today, but did not expect it to be quite so brutal .... very dull

Glad I took some profit on friday. Isn't aug what is called the silly season, with minimal City staff at their desks? More dull days could be on the way.

China's Cnooc buys Canadian energy firm Nexen in $15.1 bln deal
http://www.proactiveinvestors.com/companies/news/32301/chinas-cnooc-buys-canadian-energy-firm-nexen-in-151-bln-deal-32301.html?

fall is looking heavily overdone, as is usually the case.


Nexen
i know these guys ...... they're not a bad bunch, and i work with them in M/E, particularly Yemen

what do you suggest to buy? TPL?

why on earth would you buy TPL? .... i was merely making an observation about Nexen

as for buying, i topped up with some more AAPL - numbers due after the close tomorrow

good to see at least a partial recovery in US ..... now dow ONLY 135 after about 200 - and AAPL showing blue now too! :-)

don't say i didn't tell you ..... meanwhile, dow recovers ever more and is now scarcely -100 .... not bad one way and another

serves me right .... AAPL's numbers are rubbish so have been bitten in the bum! .... unfortunately, those numbers are likely to affect dow's overall performance too

Bad luck cynic - "Net income jumped 21 percent from a year earlier to $8.8 billion, or $9.32 a share, about 10 percent below expectations."

Apple blames rare miss on new iPhone anticipation, economy