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

no ..... in fact was considering adding to my short but that be just greedy ...... i think the markets will remain quite volatile, so money to be made in both directions if you can get the rhythm right

Tempting skinny but Dollar Index looks strong, waiting for a bit of weakness doesn't always work but going that way today. Who knows what those crazy yanks will do at 2.30pm though :O)

Still have two shorts open carried forward from yesterday, now at around breakeven if you include the overnight funding.

decided to be disciplined and banked a very nice profit considering the modest exposure
i'll now wait and see ...... not impossible that dow will fall to +/-13000 again, in which case i shall then go long

One position remaining 13184 closed at 13141

13132.5 short remains open.

Out for now @ 5855.6 + 41.50

Small long @13,122 - but won't hang around.

have now reversed and taken the same modest sized long at 13065 ..... we shall see

Just the 200 off the DOW then!

hindsight is great, but i came to the conclusion that as i was undecided whether to take a further short position, banking the profit on the table was the sensible decision

Just closed my other short 13132.5 closed at 13050.5, nice little profit made!!

Very Good Skinny!! If you could turn the below into a chart I've marked support and resistance.

http://rt8.it-finance.com/FinSpreadsFlash/showimage.phtml?id=9879028a7ddd00674f42e435c52d5c56c18f16a82dae7cd91434cb00e23244f6&type=png

I can't seem to atm, the best I can do is turn it into a clickable link - click for chart

I'm sure hilary will enter stage left :-)

Try putting it in an inline frame, and be sure to declare a width and height otherwise you'll get scrollbars.

&ltiframe src="http://rt8.it-finance.com/FinSpreadsFlash/showimage.phtml?id=9879028a7ddd00674f42e435c52d5c56c18f16a82dae7cd91434cb00e23244f6&type=png" width="820" height="620"></iframe>

Easy innit? :)

Thanks hils. :-)

Shortie - have you changed the HTML in your post? - it was a secure link before.

Thanks Skinny, so as the chart shows today the DOW is testing 13020 support after yesterday testing and falling back against 13280 resistance. If the current support breaks I see next support at 12760 being the mid point of the July range, how much support will be at this range is another question. Also note the DMA crosses, 20DMA is about to cross down the DMA100 confirming the downtrend, a close below 13000 the phychological level should see a fall to 12760 support. IMO anyway

Hi Skinny, I posted the wrong link then edited the post with the correct one. Whats a secure link, is that like when I log into my spreadbetting account and get the padlock