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

how do these indices work ? Appreciating the volitility that has occurred since ive been away for 4 weeks, but the FTSE is higher than when i left however the vast majority of my holdings including about another 30 on my watchlist appear to have fallen by more than 10% - 15%. Well if nothing else At least the snow was good

Have wondered about that myself sj everything seems to be falling but the Ftse is rising?

Miners

firstly, i would hazrd a guess that your portfolio has a preponderance of minnows, or AIM-listed at best - these are always likely to be mosre volatile and/or clobbered in a weak market.

secondly, the FTSE is heavily overweighted with (real!) oilies and miners and financials - financials have recovered well of late and of course oils and miners remain stratospheric

Cynic's right..at the moment you can't go wrong with mid-weight oilies at the moment..(as long as they are producing) !

A large reversal on all main indices has just happened. Any ideas !

GE results miss estimates

From another thread , General Electric Co earning lower than anticipated ?

minus 57 now..was plus 38 this morning...crikey !

GE figures were horrid .... big Q is whether or not 12450/12500 can be held

.........have just started to use spread bets instead of CFD's - thanks to your advice here last week.

So much simpler and I am not getting clobbered with fees either - so thank you to those who pointed me in the right direction.

And with my maiden bet - I caught the downswing in the FTSE and exited almost at the bottom - so am feeling quite chuffed with myself - for a change

Now who can I give it back to ?? MMmmmmm

Bhunt I know that Etrade do ftse spreadbets for 1 point most others seem to be 2

Quite a lot of vitriol directed at ECB for leaving rates unchanged in Telegraph, suggesting that they are burying their heads in the sand and may destroy the unity of the eu by trying to control inflation. Their take is that this period of inflation and stellar commodity prices is a temporary spike and will soon resolve, presumably taking oil and miners with it. Also heard yesterday that a lot of mortgages are 30 year fixed in the states, which would infer that those holders would only lose out by US cuts through higher inflation. Not sure when Euro/GBP will reverse but not sure if it is now .8000 is a nice round figure though

Watchout for pullback time possibly on monday morning again for ftse...dow not doing well !

Many British expats that retired to France and Spain must be feeling the pain with the euro so strong.

not as badly as those who bought "illegal" houses in Spain and are now having them demolished ...... in our biz, we have an "in" joke that we don't deal with Spain for 10 years and then remember exactly why not!

Well I have continued to increase my profits with the exception of 1 mad trade when I got carried away - will bank the rest now and stay on the sidelines now.

Have a good weekend all

It occurs to me that with the more or less confirmed slowdown/recession in the US, plus the likelihood of the Chinese economy slowing after the euphoria of the Olympics has evaporated then the commodity boom will fizzle out by the end of 2008. The inflationary forces generated by the massive increase in the price of oil and metals will gradually dissipate by the middle of 2009 as demand falls away. Perhaps the only imponderable is how much unemployment will rise in the meantime.

What makes you think demand will fall away in 2009 for oil and metals? Oil and metals also are not the main driving factors behind inflation, both have been on the rise in past years when we have seen a sustainable inflation level and central banks have managed to keep it within set targets. The bakning and finance sectors make up two thirds of the UK's GDP and are by far the biggest forces able to affect inflation.

Inflation currenty seams to be the worlds way of dealing with depression. The US finance capital of the world deal with inflation by printing more money. This combats the problem but creates another by reducing the true value of money. As investors we don't want to see holdings shrink. Two options are available being gold or index linked bonds which both protect value. Gold is the more volitile and has costs associated with holding as to bonds which pay income.

This is why any depression will cause the sell off of equity markets and falls in related Indicies. Agreed unemployment should follow what we're seeing as businesses cut back to try and preserve margins but by then I suspect we'll be at the bottom or coming out of depression.

Sunday Times article by David Smith is worth reading ..... IMF reckons US economy to gow only about 0.5% for each of the next 2 years, and advanced economies overall by only 1.3% .... but offset by emerging ecnomies at about 6.6% giving overall world growth of +/-3.75%, being stronger than growth in early 1990s and turn of this century.

with more vile numbers expected from US and B&B in UK etc, can't say it cheers me greatly for the coming week(s), but a crumb nevertheless.