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

finished -54 but could have been far worse after -140 at one point

now then "arry"

DOW futures currently -129. Gonna be a grim start to the afternoon.

Roll on 1:30.

US trade deficit widens

DOW & FTSE graphs on page 1 well below any support from the DMA's. Looks like 10,000 & 5000 levels are going to be tested again before St Ledger day.

9830 and 5088 respectively are the potential low support levels

cynic - can you put the charts in the opening post please.

the ones i quote from are not copyable ...... they are actually produced by a pal of mine who works some very complex and arcane system called GANN theory - all gibberish to me! - but it's reasonable accurate insofar as charts ever can be

a chirpier start indicated in NY ...... employment numbers must be modestly encouraging

==========

Number of people filing for initial jobless benefits fell to 473,000 last week; down 31,000 from previous week.

I'm not confident that the downtrend has been broken though, so am sitting on some cash & will wait a week or two I think. August has not been the greatest month for trading. Hopefully, when The City boys get back to their desks, things will pick up.

i merely post!

Well the +54 DOW futures I saw earlier has already fizzled in to a minus figure!

DOW -140. Nudging the 10000 level. Not expecting great things on the FTSE on tues, which is a shame as the DOW was nicely up on friday.

Now DOW up 243 points! Non-farm payrolls on friday so have a feeling this could be short lived.

Harry payroll numbers are not going to suddenly jump one way or another, what is of far greater importance is sentiment and the yanks are beginning to wake up to the fact that they may well miss out if they continue to talk their markets down as the rest of the world goes the other way.

Well, I'm not sure you are right, as trading today on FTSE & DOW reasonably flat, so the employment figures may have a bigger effect than you think on friday p.m.
Of course I am talking about the immediate effect.

no doubt there will be a knee jerk reaction one way or the other but now the "vibes" coming from europe and the far east are becoming more positive..... we shall see.

Just realised it's Labour day in the U.S. this w/e, so even more reason to see a rough trading session on friday.

Bloomberg - "Companies in the U.S. added more jobs than forecast in August, easing concern the economy was falling back into recession.

Private payrolls that exclude government agencies climbed 67,000, after a revised 107,000 increase in July that was more than initially estimated, Labor Department figures in Washington showed today. The median estimate of economists surveyed by Bloomberg News called for a gain of 40,000. Overall employment fell 54,000 for a second month and the unemployment rate rose to 9.6 percent as more people entered the labor force."