Quick question on the FTSE

[pietro]

hi im a complete newbie to trading but, from what i can gather by looking at the markets there is a lot of uncertainty in trading, im spread betting if that relivent. my question is with the FTSE down, is this largely due to the uncertainty with oil prices and the war in iraq?

Last week i saw the ftse all over the place up 50pts etc, now its barly moving at all. Also if 51 of the 100 companies in the FTSE were up would that generally speaking mean the FTSE would be up?

also is level 2 trading relivent to spread betting?

thanks for your time

Pietro

 

[TheBramble]

Pietro, welcome to t2w.

The FTSE is a weighted average of the top 100 UK companies by market capitalisation.

I don't trade UK anymore, but from memory, the bigger companies (such as BP, Vodafone) would have more of an effect on the FTSE100 index than say a smaller one.

From when I used to trade it, I think the top 50% weighted value of the index resided within the top 15 or so companies.

As for why the FTSE is up/down/sideways - who knows. It's always a tough call (therefore quite useless to most traders) to equate what outside events are having what specific impact on the market - if any.

I don't believe LII is particularly relevant to SBing. It's like having a laser-guided-intertial-navigation system fitted to a wheelbarrow.