Well, another journey, another couple of days on the road with a ferry in between - shame I totally forgot about the so -called 'Bank Holiday weekend'! Where I generally live they take a holiday on May 1st irrespective of which day of the week it falls on - if it's a Saturday or Sunday then Monday is the day, but otherwise (as with this year of course) the holiday is always May 1st. Anyway, not a massively pleasant journey - followed by a bit of a mess regarding my internet connection which 'they' decided had been cancelled by me due to not having been used since last December - despite the fee still having been debited every month since then! "Aaarghh" might have been the polite reaction - but as the family would attest, 'polite' is not always the Williams way when confronted with such behaviour. Ah well, it's all up and running again now and a fishing trip is planned for tomorrow so things can't be that bad, can they?

Regarding the markets, the brief pause in M&A (Merger & Acquisition) activity seems to have ended - everyone and his brother once again wants a piece of the action - I just hope you had been keeping Reuters on your watch list! (I know some of you had spotted the earlier channel and have benefited accordingly, so well done to you - there's a chart below with some thoughts on profit taking.) But 'private equity' isn't taking a back seat just yet either: EMI looks like it might be heading in that direction. Doubtless in due course, just like the rest, it will return to the Stock Market with a considerably bigger debt burden than beforehand.

I note that the retail banking sector isn't that relaxed - "Record Insolvency Numbers" screams a recent headline. UK consumer debt is now more or less exactly equal to an entire year's economic activity of the whole country: £1.3 trillion! Unsustainable for much longer? I think so - but I've been saying that for a few years now! However, I also mentioned some time ago that Mr Sinatra wasn't wrong when he spoke about ants and their considerable ability as woodcutters: "The higher the top, the bigger the drop...."

It seems that these days, not only politicians are untrustworthy - even Credit Suisse has now discovered that one of its staff has been doing rather nicely for himself and his extended family from providing a wee bit of advance notice about private equity deals - he has been found out, but 'tips' sometimes belong to icebergs in my experience.... and the other current scam of course (which thankfully may at last be receiving the exposure it so richly deserves) is 'Personal Protection Insurance' (PPI) - the expensive and useless insurance that lenders tend to force upon borrowers - if Elliott Ness were still on the go, he would know how to deal with the perpetrators.

And the next scam of major proportions will be carbon offsetting - you read it here first - at least I'm fairly sure you did. Type the phrase into Google if you're interested.

No need (not that I would be interested enough anyway) to discuss recent elections - I daresay you have had your fill of such nonsense - but I will be keeping an amused eye on what the next Chancellor's excuses are going to be - they will provide a certain amount of ammunition to the cynical I suspect, and might well become collectors' items - a bit like Murray Walker's pronouncements perhaps - except of course for the fact that Mr Walker seems a thoroughly decent, upright and honest person.

Anyway, back to matters economic - and finally today - it looks like Porsche has moved on VW as mentioned a few weeks ago - certainly to prevent a disastrous private equity deal - but methinks they'll live to regret it. We'll see.

On to today's charts then, and first we'll look at that old stalwart, Reuters, which has been approached as per the 'M&A' activity mentioned above. Then we’ll examine the effect (possibly) of ‘rumours’ on the chart of HMV – both pretty useful as regards your ongoing trading education.

I trust you're having an excellent Bank Holiday and that the sun is shining for you, and I look forward to talking to you again next weekend.

All the best until then.

Ian.