Well, it's time once again to get the nose back to the grindstone after a thoroughly enjoyable and enlightening two weeks in the French Alps.

It's quite interesting (to me at least) how badly the French cope with 'modern life' in an economic sense - catching up with the last fortnight's news today I see there have been ongoing demonstrations against proposed changes to employment law as it affects younger workers.

In the skiing environment, it's only a couple of years since someone was actually jailed for two weeks for daring to set up a ski school in competition with the French national one - the matter went to the European Court, of course, and I was more than a little amused to see the plethora of new ski schools springing up in the Alps with the verdict of the Court having of course gone against the national ski school.

Maybe it will now mean an improvement in the standard of French ski instruction, which overall is pretty poor - certainly the worst in Europe - that's what 'protectionism' does to any economic sector over the years!

Another interesting thing that rather came home to me over the last two weeks is what is going to happen to air travel in years to come.

My thoughts about that economic sector were triggered by sitting most mornings on the terrace of a high level mountain restaurant and watching all the jet exhaust fumes polluting the upper atmosphere as they crisscrossed an otherwise azure sky. I noted on arriving home and checking 'the news' that UK - originated flights are set to double by 2030 and that currently UK politicians and civil servants alone, occupy 100000 aircraft seats a year. The current 'environmental complaining' seems to be at fairly local level, with protests against new runways and so on, but I reckon the real problem is at 35,000 feet and I truly shudder at the long term effects of kerosene pollution - I suspect that in a few years, irrespective of rising oil prices, flying is going to become severely restricted and that the growth predictions are simply wrong.

Duty - free aircraft fuel will become a thing of the past and the likes of Easy Jet and Ryanair too will disappear as fares rocket, so if you're planning that trip to Oz maybe you should do it in the next few years rather than as a 'retirement present'!

I know I'm a bit of an 'eco warrior' and there is a certain bias to my opinions but the pollution of the upper atmosphere is a chicken that will come home to roost within the next five or ten years at most, I reckon.

Buy shares in passenger ship builders? Possibly not the worst idea you might come up with!

Anyway, that's enough Williams rant for today - what about the markets then?

Not a lot has changed in the last couple of weeks, frankly - as expected the FTSE100 has struggled to find clear space above 6000 and the Dow above 11300, both of these figures looking like they will act as 'magnets' for some time to come, before major drops take place. It would come as no surprise at all to see another upwards attempt that will again fizzle out - perhaps the FTSE100, for example, will hit 6050 - 6075 this week before it runs out of steam again.

We'll see.

On to this weekend's charts - both updates of previously featured ones. (12th March for Northumbrian Water and 26th February for the Pru.) In the case of the former, we're looking at 'conflicting signals' and in the case of the latter, 'windfall management'.

And that's the lot for this weekend - my next 'weekend off' will be that of 7th May when a week's fishing beckons - I'll remind you nearer the time of course - and a password change looms for those of you who are approaching 'renewal time'. (I'll email you in the next week or so if this applies to you.)

Happy trading till next weekend,

Ian.

PS: I nearly forgot to mention that one evening last week my friends and I visited a casino just for a bit of fun, none of us really being into gambling. Given my interest in numbers and how things tend to 'cluster' as mentioned over the last two WICS in regard to losing/winning trades and the tossing of a coin, I took a particular interest in the roulette wheel.

In the European version of roulette there is only a single 'zero' so there are 37 numbers that can come up, laid out in 12 groups of 3 each (1 -3, 4 - 6 etc.) plus the zero on its own. The 36 numbers from 1 to 36 are split into 18 'black' and 18 'red'.

In theory, each number should come up with the same frequency, but what would be the chances of 37 spins resulting in each number from 0 to 36 coming up once?

Over a sufficient number of spins, running into the thousands, each number will come up the same number of times, but in only 37 spins, that result is pretty close to an impossibility. While I was watching the wheel (and staking a few euros on the strength of my thinking about it) I saw nine consecutive 'blacks' come up, followed by two zeros. What are the chances of that? Greater than you might think!

Many times I counted what happened in 37 consecutive spins, and never once did all 12 groups of 3 numbers come up - in one case, not one number between 31 and 36 came up, and in another case, 13 to 18 did not come up.

Why am I telling you this? Just to reinforce the fact that when you are dealing with small numbers of events, things tend to 'cluster' and if you suffer a few consecutive losing trades, that is very much part of how things work out and should cause you no concern unless they are the result of imperfect execution.

.'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'.