News just in from Iceland - McDonalds' is to shut up shop and leave the country....

Well, there you go then - it just shows that some good can come out of recession! Maybe a visit is called for next Spring - after all, Iceland has some great fishing rivers, and the prospect of not seeing a "McDo" sign anywhere, is indeed a pleasant one.

Speaking of "pleasant", it seems a jolly time was had by all at the Yank Bankers' Association annual jamboree the other day. It was a real love - in, with their chairman pointing out that "Bankers care. This is not just a job for us - it's a calling. It's about putting service above self." Oh dear oh dear - quick - pass the sick bag!

And still with bankers, all sorts of shenanigans are on the go in Blighty, with Wee Allie the chancellor about to announce a breakup of Lloyds and RBS, to try to "increase retail bank competition". No current High Street bank will be allowed to buy any of the businesses, and the new owners allegedly will be American, Australian, or Middle Eastern. Hmm - we'll see! Northern Crock too may be split up and part of it may become a Building Society. Hang on - a while back, wasn't it that already? And if it all means the UK taxpayer is going to benefit, IW is going to have to set aside a hat for dessert one evening...... and what about the wheeze where Lloyds is planning to dispose of a whole lot of the old HBoS land bank? It's all so unsaleable that the plan is just to GIVE it away, to "selected builders". That won't be to Bob then. Seemingly Lloyds may come to a deal with the likes of Barratt or Persimmon, where the builders do the building and the bank does the giving - in return for a "profits" split once the houses are eventually sold. Ho ho ho.

Anyway, there's nothing to worry about in Blighty - mention was made in last weekend's ramblings that Wee Allie was expecting "growth" to arrive via the chimney, along with Santa, and now "City economists" have given us the reason for his wishful thinking - the "end of the VAT holiday will cause Britain to grow again." And what did the same people say, back when Allie announced the VAT "holiday" in the first place? Something about its "helping speed Britain's recovery"? Maybe they should declassify the stuff these guys are taking - it would save them having to hide in the loo to smoke it....

The other "delusional" bit today has to be the proposed strike by cabin crew at British Airways. They are kidding, aren't they? The company has been losing money hand over fist - hardly the best time for its staff to take strike action, surely? And still with "you must be kidding" - Russia is planning to borrow £11bn from Europe, via a bond issue. Now correct me if I'm wrong, but the last time they did that (in 1998), did they not default on the repayments? Hmm, will I invest or not........? And Blackstone (a "private" private equity company that went "public" a while back - try the WICS search engine) is about to set up IPOs (again, try "IPO" in the search engine) for five or six of the debt laden companies it owns, to try to extract even more money from the sheep before things finally go pear shaped altogether.

Jings - all these hard investment decisions to take, eh? Maybe "dosh in the mattress" is still the best idea?

Anyway, not a lot "different" is going on - the suckers' rally that began in March is rolling over, pretty much as predicted, and the next leg of the ongoing fall is in its very early stages. Will there be rebounds? Of course there will! Will the main Western indices head back up and break above their most recent highs? Very unlikely - but as with ALL market action, not "impossible" of course. Will potential "buy" trades be hard to find? Certainly - but (as per tonight's videos) it's a matter of looking for them. And if you can't find "enough" buys - ie around six or so, then for goodness' sake don't have a dozen "sells" running at the same time, by way of filling up your order book as it were. THAT would be "overtrading" and that's a dangerous thing to do for sure. If you have enough patience and stick to only a couple of indices together with one or two nice - looking stocks (in terms of "sell" trades) you shouldn't go far wrong overall. (And to all my Australian and New Zealand based subscribers - that applies to you in exactly the same way - indeed you'll see an email below from one of you, making a very sensible point that might well be of assistance to you too.)

Finally before an email or two, a wee note from the USA via my brother in law on Wall St - manufacturing now accounts for only 9% of American jobs. Detroit has 29% unemployment.....recovery? What recovery?

OK, on to a couple of your emails, and first here's one from "David", who is maybe a wee bit "too close" to the charts at the moment:

"Hello Ian,
I guess I was guilty of beginners over-exuberance when I emailed you last week. Having now looked at a lot more WICS and video updates I realise that I have a long way to go in being able to spot chart patterns easily. I spent a couple of hours this morning following the strategy outlined in your FAQ about finding trading opportunities, starting with LSE shares at £200m cap and working up the list, and to be honest - I couldn't find anything. It may be that the state of the markets at the moment means that finding clear chart patterns to trade is more difficult, but I think I may be suffering from what you call in the manual "paralysis by analysis" - at first I thought I could see patterns everywhere, but now I can't see anything. Do you have any suggestions to help me up this learning curve?
Regards - David"

My reply (which I hope was reasonably useful to you, David!) was:

"David - this is by no means unusual, so don't worry about it! The best thing to do (and trust me - I am not being facetious) is to walk away for a few days and have a think about what you are looking for from trading - ie not the patterns or their lack, but what YOU want to achieve from this business. Let go totally of the actual "pattern recognition" bit for a while. You are "too close" to the markets for the moment I suspect, & it's time to step back a bit.
Ian."

The next email is also about "Paralysis by Analysis" in fact. This one is from "Steve":

"Ian, I wonder if you could give me some guidance on trading management? From the manual we should only have about 12 trades on the table at any one go (assuming we are using 4% of our capital on each trade) and a balance of buy and sell trades. My question is, in your experience, how many shares / stocks / currency pairs should I be keeping on my watch list ? Obviously too little and my choices will become limited, but on the other hand too many and I spend more time looking at charts, getting stressed and not enjoying it so much. I think its called analysis paralysis. What in your experience is a happy medium ? Many thanks
Steve"

My reply was as follows:

"Steve - a happy medium was my Really Scary Granny when she had had a few....
It's not hard to keep an eye on around 50 - 100 including indices. It takes only a few seconds a time once you have a "practised eye".
Ian"

The final email today is from "Rick" in New Zealand, and it leads nicely into today's charts in fact:

"Ian - I have been mainly trading US stocks, would you agree with the logic that the higher US dollars stocks are great to trade because they simply have further to move/fall, making them easier trading opportunities because they are nowhere near the floor?
Many Thanks, Rick."

I replied as follows:

"Rick - 'yes' is the answer, but you also need to be aware of the need for wider
stop losses than on lower priced stocks.
Ian."

On that note (and don't forget the likes of FedEx from video clip 2864...) on to some charts. They are all showing potential "sell" setups, but of the four, maybe two are of the greatest interest, for the reason suggested by Rick in his email above. We'll look at "horizontal support" on the charts of Anglo Pacific, Associated British Foods, HSBC Bank, and Barclays Bank.

That's all for this weekend then - it's "travel time" again for IW and co - we're leaving very early on Wednesday 4th and will resurface some time on Sunday 8th. There will be no WICS on the 8th, but there WILL be video updates all being well. It would be great if you can put any emails on "hold" between around 1800hrs British time on Tuesday 3rd and Sunday 8th, because as mentioned in today's videos, I don't check my inbox when travelling. ("Why not?" - I hear you enquire.) Because generally each day involves around 400 miles on the road and thus it's pretty much a "hot soak, a good dinner, and a wee dram" upon arrival in the evenings, with the laptop not invited to join in!

All the best then, till Sunday 8th.

Ian.

'IMPORTANT NOTICE: These WICS charts are for EDUCATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY. They represent only MY understanding of what is happening in the market for any particular share, stock, commodity or index. In NO circumstances should they be construed as recommendations to trade. If I choose to trade what I see, that is MY decision. YOU must, in turn, come to YOUR OWN conclusions about what action, if any, YOU might choose to take'.