Oh no, not more Europe?

You cannot get away from it, so you might as well get used to it - Europe. June 9th is when we will be told whether the 5 economic tests are met (by the way, in the interests of public service, those tests relate to - economic convergence, investment, employment, financial services, flexibility).

So where does this leave us as stock futures traders? At a dinner this week by the Britainineurope many of the key issues were highlighted by Lord Marshall, Ken Clarke and Patricia Hewitt. What is clear is that UK stocks futures are going to be increasingly influenced by the likelihood of a single currency stance - that is one of the things increasingly on the market's mind and so we should not be surprised if EU related news impacts domestic stocks for now.

Europe here we come

But more interestingly, finding opportunities is the lifeblood of the trader - wherever those opportunities may be. And when we look at European sector indices, it's easy to see that those opportunities may lie in Europe.

Now, don't let that put you off. No one wants to trade a host of unfamiliar stocks in countries they have never been too, in a currency that is alien, with all the incipient costs going with it. Fine, you don't need to have any of those problems.

Because you can trade in sterling in stocks such as France Telecom, Allianz, DaimlerChrysler, Deutsche Bank, Deutsche Telecom, France Telecom, Telecom Italia, Telefonica, Volkswagen, Vivendi, Nokia, ING, Siemens to name some of the biggest names - surely those aren't alien. We are of course talking universal stock futures, and for the full mouth-watering list visit www.liffeinvestor.com.

And before you complain that there's a lot of telecoms stocks there and who would want to trade those, we are of course talking about trading using universal stock futures, so feel free to sort those stocks.

I'll alright jack

Sure, the UK has ample stocks you can focus on, who needs to go abroad. Well, if you want to leverage your trades, and are seeking to find increase the number of stocks on which you can trade for short-term gains then the big European giants have to be considered otherwise you have too few UK stock futures, and so may end up waiting on the sidelines until your trading criteria are met.

Worst still, many traders waiting for the low risk-high probability trade too often make the impatient trade through lack of choice.

You may not like it, but we're all Europeans now. At least we may as well try to profit from it.