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 wish you well, but already that rally is fading quite fast - but as you say, there probably are some bargains out there

RRL the other day,....AFR, AEX, GKP even RKP......there are so many, BLNX is tempting but already in.....perhaps a rise is coming in the run up to the christmas period.....badly need one...and I forgot about the gold stocks....POG, CEY, HGM...MIRL etc...

i agree about BLNX but my inclination would be towards more defensive stocks with good yield - e.g. VOD

.

The rise this am was short covering.

Interestingly, hardly any tiddlers went up which showed to me that we were about to fall to earth again.

One wonders when the large miners will have bottomed as their charts look horrendous.

yes was just wondering the same thing dd, selling pressure is immense on them. Nipping in and out of XTA. Just took some @ 982.9

I'm still not convinced we know the full answer for this drop.

Whilst to an extent it has been on the cards for a few months, the rapid fall of the miners makes me wonder whether there is an institution in trouble.

There might just be....because these merchant banks and such work on leverage so if these drops go past a certain point you could put one or two in real, real trouble....

Miners are in a risk sector, so they are not going to be a popular investment atm. Also commodity prices are down; Copper, aluminium, zinc, lead and nickel are all down, so that is going to be reflected in the extractor's sp.

chart-guru-san who very accurately called a support/buy point of 11160 on dow, still reckons that is so, but this afternoon may put that to the test (again).

with regards to ftse, he is looking for 5088 as an entry point

i wasn't properly organised so was a bit late on my entry point on dow, but yet again 11160 (or a bit below) triggered a bounce

Gold and Dollar fighting it out for place of safety. Any weakness in Dollar Index Chart and Dow rallies and vice versa.

Dollar and Gold winning at mo, crazy market.

What about 1160 cynic!

Chart of UKX with todays pivot points on there which seem to work OK as at least temporary stopping points. It's a long drop to the next one :(

DD .... made it on post 6351 selling out for a decent profit, and then tried to be clever and lost it back again, but no blood ..... anyway dow currently just about back up to that key number

I'm not sure where you;re getting 11160 from Richard and quite clearly that level was busted. I'm using 11100 which although pierced has provided support throughout the day thus far. Having said that it's now under it's 8th re-test on the 10 min chart so I'll be surprised if it continues to hold.

"guru" uses gann charts, which are far too esoteric for me ...... your caveat well noted

cmc offering 4987 - 90.

FTSE just dipped below 5000 another bloodbath Tuesday