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

Anything that bucks the trend 12.5% without any significant announcement has to be suspect I think. One to keep an eye on later though as there could well be some pennies in it.

Decided to short the FTSE from 5700 in the end, as it had been dithering around there.

CAD Manufacturing Sales m/m 0.4% consensus 0.3% previous 1.5%

USD Core CPI m/m 0.2% consensus 0.1% previous 0.1%

USD Unemployment Claims 439k consensus 372K previous 355K

USD CPI m/m 0.1% consensus 0.1% previous 0.6%

USD Empire State Manufacturing Index -5.2 consensus -7.2 previous -6.2

just shows how difficult the markets are ..... employment numbers are far worse than forecast, yet dow has moved very little

Thanks Skinny! Bit of a mixed picture. In the end we'll probably see the markets fretting about the same issues as it did yesterday

Using Sandy. Continuing claims up, emergency slightly down.

Asda's quarterly sales growth slows

LONDON | Thu Nov 15, 2012 12:50pm GMT

(Reuters) - Asda, the British arm of U.S. retailer Wal-Mart Stores (WMT.N), continued to outperform many rival UK supermarkets even though it posted a slight slowdown in quarterly like-for-like sales growth on Thursday.

Britain's second-biggest supermarket chain behind Tesco (TSCO.L) said sales at shops open more than a year, excluding fuel and VAT sales tax, were up 0.3 percent in the 13 weeks to September 30, its fiscal third quarter.

The rise is below the 0.7 percent sales uplift Asda recorded in its second quarter.

Wedding ring found and back where it belongs...

5690.8 bought FTSE

Found the ticket then! :-)

Just come across this - Who, What, Why: Who first called it a 'fiscal cliff'?

The phrase "fiscal cliff" is now part of the American lexicon, describing the looming deadline when tax cuts expire and spending cuts kick in. But where did the term come from and is the image a helpful one?

Thanks :)

5698.8 FTSE position closed

Debating a long on Wall St, 12540 support I think will hold..

I'm not so sure Shortie - but you may well be right. I'm not risking it

tricky innit :-)

Sure is, I'm not a fan of trading minute charts. There's so many channels at the moment crossing direction. The below Wall St 15 min chart is what I'm working off.

http://rt16.it-finance.com/FinSpreadsFlash/showimage.phtml?id=e26ce26c91a21ff4b59edf4afa2c007690727dbab350db8630cb88dfee7cfb9e&type=png

If support does hold, 5690 would be support for FTSE...

http://rt16.it-finance.com/FinSpreadsFlash/showimage.phtml?id=ad7bc35c1a5d98527e8a6b491f613a63be930ba69c2d5b9bf581332380e2ce55&type=png

Same chart but a daily showing where I get the support line from, if it breaks then 12020 is the next level.

Ouch!

Philly Fed Manufacturing Index -10.7 consensus 1.1 previous 5.7