Hi there - it feels like an age since we last spoke - but when I had a good look early this afternoon at what has been going on in the markets I get the distinct impression that nothing has changed - certainly my bearish views have not yet been vindicated. "Quite the reverse" in fact, to plagiarise a remark from an advert from many years ago for McEwen's Export - just so you realise that in spite of my absence my weird sense of humour is still intact.

Anyway, what's to report? Tesco is still rampant and still claiming to be creating 'thousands of new jobs' - the 'new' word may well contravene the advertising laws in my view, since it would appear more jobs overall are disappearing than are being created as so many of the little shops vanish, to the vast - probably irreversible - detriment of every High Street.

An email from my brother in law tells me that job adverts in the USA have plummeted to an all time low - not a great indication that the current upward push in the Dow Jones has a great deal of intellect behind it.

Some time ago I mentioned that many (most?) hedge funds might be somewhat less savoury than at first glance and I see that one of the biggies - Amaranth Advisors - has managed to lose $6bn of its clients' money only a week after claiming they had made 25% profit for the year to date! I would hate to know how much they would lose in a bad year.

Seriously though, many hedge funds are verging on bankruptcy without a doubt - and we're going to see an awful lot of economic bother as a result, not to mention some massive fraud being uncovered.

The other thing that has hit my Victor Meldrew nerve today is the new (?) practice of selling your house to a company that pays about 70 - 80 percent of its alleged valuation, and then you rent the place back from them, usually paying more than you were doing when you had a mortgage. I don't believe it......

So what am I getting at in the few foregoing paragraphs?

Simple - the crash is still imminent! It's just taking a wee bit longer to arrive than anticipated.

And on that note, let's have a look now at a few charts, because it will take me a day or two to get back properly into gear after a cancelled ferry that forced rather an extreme detour to get back in time to write WICS at all this weekend - then the b..... boat's hydraulics failed and we waited three hours till they could lower the doors to let vehicles off. The joys of travel - but there again, nobody forced me to do it so I'll keep the whingeing to myself. (Apart from sharing it with you folks of course - why should I suffer entirely alone?)

Anyway, as suggested above, I should be slightly more up to date with events by next weekend - so here are this weekend's charts without further ado.

All the best,

Ian.