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'm staying away from the indices at the moment, purely because i have lost my touch with timing and assuredly would not want to leave open overnight .... that said, if you can get the rhythm right, there's a lot of money to be made

Dow long covered +98 by limit @ 10129 last night it seems :-)

listen,learn and remember

http://catastrophist.wordpress.com/2010/05/09/ben-lichtenstein-sp500-pit-squawk-may-6/

What a load of bullshit!

strange old day in USA, and tiresome as it is that dow closed below 10,000 i would hope that it is no more than a bit of continuing nervousness ..... certainly good to see new home sales +15% in april, and that i feel is more important an indicator of where economies are heading

cynic more of an optimist than a cynic....

Should i close my short @78?

Again, I have to say, good call skinny - if you want an answer, I'd say, first: to which index do you refer? and second: if it's the Dow, and you mean 9878, depends where you went short from. You'll never catch me sat on the fence! :-)

9838 a few minutes ago

now back to 9900

stops 'r us ?

:-)

well that looks to have burnt your fingers badly camelot, if you were bold enough to be short ..... if you look now, you'll see dow cash recovered heftily to 10080 - i expect futures are similar

hoodless brennan i have always regarded as a somewhat unfortunate name .... it brings to mind a mistakenly circumcised catholic! ..... they should perhaps change to hoodless bernstein

I had to grab the Dow last night at the spooky figure of 911!! Also long UKX @ 4985

another spiffing day, but i need to constantly remind myself that the market can dive even faster and sharper

Does it matter cynic? Dont you swing both ways?

only when playing golf

LOL ,, as Churchill said "a good walk spoiled" ..

mark twain but never mind ...... played very poorly yesterday but was just very glad to be out in the sunshine after a shitty tuesday

Mark Twain it was.
For us 'non golfers' (what's the point of trying to knock a little white ball down a hole in the middle of a field?) G.K. Chesterton said: "I regard golf as an expensive way of playing marbles."

Isn't golf a game played by men with knobbly balls?

So how would you categorise the lady golfers?