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

Will probably be influenced by the Dow's performance to some extent, but could also be some profit taking before the close. worth keeping any eye on.

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Worth keeping an eye on Dollar Index, just hit some resistance retracing a wee bit, Dow bounces, vice versa.

Well I'm out the FTSE 250 now, broken even..

Resistance broken on Dollar Index, down goes the Dow.

yet another very ugly day ..... perhaps i should have shorted GOOG at the open, but that would just have been foolhardy - easy and most profitable with hindsight though :-)

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heading back to 13300 yet again ..... hope it holds

Hip Hip Hooray!

GDP figures to show Britain's double-dip recession is over

The double-dip recession will be officially declared over this week when the Office for National Statistics reveals that the economy grew by around 0.7pc in the months to September.

i saw that too, so let's hope we see some decent northerly action in the coming week on both sides of the atlantic

good positive article on AAPL in ST too, but glad i bit the bullet on GOOG .... indeed the latter is looking more and more like shorting play, despite its recent plummet

Food for thought for fellow yield nerds :-

Soaring UK dividends expected to slow

UK-quoted companies paid out £64.6bn in dividends in the first nine months of this year, a greater amount than in each of the past two full years.
But analysis by Capita Registrars shows that the pace of growth is slowing, and the sharp rises over the past couple of years are unlikely to be repeated in the near future.
More

The division of the outsourcing specialist raised its estimate for payouts, for the third time this year – to £78.6bn for 2012 as a whole. But at the same time it forecast an increase of just 3 per cent for 2013, to £81bn.

Debating shorting Nikkei, I see Japanese exports to China have fallen with the territorial dispute. DOW down also so it should follow suite...

Tough call Shortie - DOW is showing slightly above its Friday low (13,312.26) and @5 below its close as I type - a day fairly devoid of major news.

Dow has Yahoo and Caterpillar reporting, can't see Yahoo reporting anything but disappointment. Aggreko suffered a broker downgrade also. There are no major data releases until Thursday (UK GDP) and Friday (US GDP) so the indicies will struggle for direction. Lets see if the DOW drifts lower later today which I expect it will. If so I'll look to short the Nikkei which I think has been bucking the trend.

I would agree that the indices are more likely to drift downwards than up, in the absence of any major news. It'll be interesting to see those two results later today - not sure when they'll be released. If they're at all positive, then the DOW will surely want to move up again.

Aapl 557 to me looks like the shorting target.

ah yes; i know you fancy shorting this one too, and you were certainly proved right with GOOG and as you have posted, you already hold a short position in AAPL - we shall see ...... of course, it may be that as a prudent precaution you may close at least part of this (very) profitable position before the numbers are announced

In for a penny, in for a pound at the moment...

As Shortie has pointed out, thurs UK GDP figures are expected to show growth, albeit in a small way. I expect a 'feel good' bounce on thurs, assuming the figures are as good as expected. U.S. figures might be a bit overshadowed by the presidential election charade.

Harry, 0.7% is expected (see the link in post 9142)