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

after a bit of a gloomy friday i am very pleasantly surprised to see FTSE having another dart at 6200
whether it can breach and hold is another matter

FTSE looking interesting currently 6084

bought a bit prematurely at 6100, but i hope won't prove to have been too rash

.

Heading towards 6000 again .

or even a tad lower
however, my gut feeling - not necessarily correct - is that thursday will see no change in interest rates in usa, and thus are big surge, sustained or not
and if there is a very small rise, is that not effectively already discounted?

Last time it went under 6000 we had a 350 point bounce .

On it's way back got down as low as 6017 all depends on the DOW as well this afternoon i suppose .

FTSE has really struggled today but has at last limped back north of 6100
it would be nice to have a good blue day on both sides of the pond

too ambitious for today i'm sure, but ideally DOW needs to climb above 16,500 and, in due course, FTSE above 6,200

16,500 has proved pretty stubborn of late but with this early surge, there's just a chance that it will follow through and bust out

woohoo!
never expected a GOOD day like today ...... glad i already had a couple of longs already in place, even though they've been a bit scary of late

cashed in half Dow for +100 but have left all FTSE running as i'm pretty confident that that will whizz at least first thing tomorrow

I couldn't be by my screen after 1 pm so couldn't play , annoying as i was going long FTSE ,should have gone long earlier at 6050. Got a couple of stocks running long though which is more my thing .

i have "hold" stocks, but have been trading Dow and FTSE to a lesser extent almost exclusively ...... i've been quite disciplined and not thrown big money at it, but it can still be quite scary

not unexpectedly, FTSE 6,200 has proved to be a hurdle, though it was breached for a couple of minutes about 15 minutes ago
managed to sell 1/2 FTSE long just below that as level was dropping for +96 ..... a nice start to the day :-)

Doesn't want to go through that 6200 does it and now falling away.

i still have a long position at 6200 placed when the market was heading south
always assuming fed indeed stays steady on interest rates as expected, it is not impossible that there'll be a renewed burst of energy

DOW
stalled as expected at 16,700 so cleared balance of long just below that
yummy yummy - will def pay for dinner!

quite tempted to short as "no change" probably now accounted for, but not brave enough


FTSE
closed comfortably through 6200 and have left long running there from exactly that level - well 6200.2 if you want to be pedantic

FTSE
changed my mind and banked nice profit at 6238

DOW
very small short running from 16,687 ...... slightly wrong call at the moment

Thought you might like this cynic ,as they say bit of a coin toss tomorrow ,probably just as well to bank your FTSE profit .
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Wed 16 Sep 2015

(ShareCast News) - The market is divided on whether the Federal Reserve will on Thursday announce an increase on interest rates following a mixed batch of economic data.
While economic growth has picked-up and unemployment has fallen, wages and inflation remain somewhat weak.

Wednesday data showed the consumer price index remained at 0.2% year-on-year in August, as expected, unchanged from the previous month but well below the Fed's 2% target.

Global pressures are also likely to be taken into consideration by the Fed, particularly the impact of the slowdown in China.

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development has trimmed its global forecast due to the further worsening of the outlook for many emerging market economies. The OECD cut its global growth forecast for 2015 to 3.0% from the 3.1% it predicted in June, though both the US and Euro-zone were revised upwards.

"The Federal Reserve faces a difficult set of economic data to digest, because it is very much pointing in different directions," said Laith Khalaf, senior analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown.

"The outcome of tomorrow's meeting is a coin toss, and the stock market reaction is likewise unpredictable. Investors who make snap decisions in anticipation of the policy decision in the US are therefore exposing their portfolio to a high degree of random chance, so it's best to watch this one from the sidelines."

Khalaf said falling commodity prices and turmoil in emerging markets have pushed expectations back for a rate rise.

Craig Erlam, senior market analyst at Oanda, said: "Markets are currently pricing in only a 25% chance of a rate hike at this stage but they have been wrong when it comes to the Fed on many occasions in the past, so I expect some of this caution that we're seeing in the markets to persist."