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

I never hedge my currency trades Harry and will admit I've been caught out a few times. If you short GBP/USD what would you buy to hedge? EUR to me would be the obvious obe against USD but really the position only magnifies losses if USD gains...

I never hedge currency trades either, just can't seem to reason why I should effectively bet against myself. I know lots of people do, just doesn't work for me.

Some people just play minimum stakes below the minimum bet allowed, to do this you can hedge to reduce your exposure. e.g. GBP/USD minimum is 50 cents, if you wanted to just play 10 cents you could open a short at 60 cents in say the December future and then a long position of 50 cents in the January future to achieve a 10 cent short. The downside of doing this is you tie up funds covering the margins against each bet.

There are two ways that I'm aware of to hedge currency trades.

Using cable and fiber as examples, as there's an element of correlation between sterling and the euro...

The first method can be used to offset short-term price fluctuations of a long-term trade. Suppose you're long cable and are happy to hold for several months. If the price is going to go up, it obviously isn't going to go up in a straight line, and there will be down hours, down days and down weeks along the way. You could use a series of fiber shorts on any of those faster timeframes to hedge the long-term cable long trade for those times when things aren't going quite to plan.

The second method can be used as a hedge as part of a grid trading strategy. Grid trading is very dangerous as it breaks one of trading's golden no-no rules of never adding to a losing position to average down. In grid trading, if you're long and the price moves down by, say, 30 pips, you add to your long... and continue to do so at every 30 pip step. Your average entry price is reducing all the time and you will be working with a very low profit target of, perhaps, 5 pips. Sooner or later the average entry price will be low enough to get out of all the trades in your basket en-masse and bank the measly 5 pip profit.

The risk of this system is that the market continues going the wrong way and you get a margin call or, worse still, are forcibly closed. One solution is to trade cable one way (eg. longs only) in the grid and hedge by trading fiber the other way (shorts only), as one pair will be banking profits all the time that the other pair is adding to its losing positions.

The strategy might sound hare-brained, but I'm an introducer for lots of Forex brokers and, trust me, I can tell you that it's VERY popular!

Looks like AAPL is on for another short position...

confess even i have become disillusioned and shall swallow the very bitter pill

Nice to see you back as an occasional poster Hils, and as as usual with a positive contribution.

I thought you'd exited a while ago Cynic.

foolishly not ..... it is a stock i have traded successfully over recent months but completely f'd up this time ..... stupid boy :-(

Gone long GBP/USD DFT 1.59881

Here's an example of a multi-currency hedge trading system.

Check the balance and equity curves. The equity will sit below the balance for long periods of time as the system holds out of the money hedged positions and adds to the basket. Once the overall profit target has been reached, it'll close all of the trades in one hit (maybe 50 or more simultaneous open trades) to bank its profit before starting over again.

If you get the position sizes and risk right, it can be reasonably safe even if it might seem a crazy way of trading at first glance. This system has only drawn down 3.5% and made 6.4% in 3 or 4 months, so there's certainly no margin pressure.

Out at 1.59928

Nice model Hilary, I love the rick of ruin display. I prefer short durations though using 3 - 5 min charts and taking small quick profits often using oscillators and a 5% rate of change. Not the most scientific approach and does mean I have to watch the screen but it works well for me.

Samsung's Galaxy S3 beats Apple's iPhone in 3Q sales

South Korean electronics firm Samsung's Galaxy S3 has outsold Apple's iPhone 4S for the first time, becoming the world's best-selling smartphone, says research firm Strategy Analytics.

Samsung sold 18 million models, compared with Apple's 16.2 million sales, in the third quarter of 2012.

The Galaxy S3 "has proven wildly popular with consumers and operators," said Strategy Analytics' Neil Mawston.

No surprise there Skinny, I have the SGS2 and know lots of people that moved from iPhone to SGS3 when their contracts ended. I'll compare the new iPhone against the SGS3 next year but expect to take another Samsung deal. Would have thought Samsung tablets had made inroads against iPad also.

Shortie - similar story for me - posted mainly for info (cynic) :-)

USD Trade Balance -41.5B consensus -44.9B previous -44.2B

CAD Trade Balance 0.8B consensus -1.4B previous -1.3B

USD Unemployment Claims 355K consensus 367K previous 363K

CAD NHPI m/m 0.2% consensus 0.2% previous 0.2%

fool and money seem apposite for me in this instance!

We're doomed! McDonald's monthly sales fall for first time in nine years

For the first time since April 2003, monthly sales at McDonald’s Corp. went down instead of up, falling 1.8% in October at stores open more than a year.

The fast-food giant known for innovating its way through the recession while competitors lagged has lately lost some of its momentum. Last month, the company said its profit for the third quarter tumbled nearly 4% amid a stronger dollar and brutal U.S. competition after sliding 4.5% in the prior quarter.

In October, sales were down across the world. Revenue tanked 2.2% in both the U.S. and in Europe while slipping 2.4% in the Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa regions.

The poor figures “reflect the pervasive challenges of today’s global marketplace,” said Don Thompson, who became chief executive in July.

or perhaps the public is waking up to what a really rather nasty product it actually is!