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

Need more than a tin hat skinny

all very tiresome

Crazy - I've had my short hat on all week!

I'm hoping when "they" digest the nothingness said and the procrastination, there may be a bounce.

ECB drawing up plans for bond purchases - Draghi

FRANKFURT | Thu Aug 2, 2012 1:45pm BST

(Reuters) - The European Central Bank will draw up a mechanism in the coming weeks to make outright purchases to stabilise stressed euro zone borrowing costs, ECB President Mario Draghi said on Thursday.

The BBC take :-

ECB pledges further euro support

European Central Bank (ECB) president Mario Draghi has said that he will come up with more measures to support the euro "over the coming weeks".

"The euro is irreversible," he said, adding that the high yields on some eurozone government bonds were unacceptable.

He said the ECB may intervene in the bond markets to support struggling nations.

Wow - I went short for a while but then went long from 12953 - clearly still had a lot further to fall!

Nothing really has changed, has it? Surely the market will come back up for air...

no, but the market has been pretty strong of late, so a quick plop is not entirely out of order

momentum below 12500 is the panic button time

Spain not so pretty :-

Looks like Eddie The Eagles ski ramp...

somewhat bravely, i modestly topped up my dow long at 12880 ..... reasonable recovery now looks underway, so fingers x-ed

USD Factory Orders m/m -0.5% consensus 0.4% previous 0.7%

Stop bringing us bad news Skinny!

All my monitors seem to have paused on the factory figures - so break up or down?

Just to get the IBEX chart above in context.

fat chance Mistress! :-)

Actually the DOW is looking a bit better, and I also bought in at just below 12900, to counter-act my losses, and that's worked nicely

Yes not a great picture Skinny. IBEX & FTSE-MIB over 5 yrs. I haven't got the Greek indices, but they are showing something like a 90% loss over the same period..

This is the ATEX20 5yr :-

On edit - changed to 5 year.

All too much for me......brain fried.,.