"Credit Crunch Nearly Over - time to buy UK Retailers"....according to a Morgan Stanley spokesperson on Wednesday. They wouldn't have any kind of sneaky agenda to dump anything held by institutions that they currently advise, would they? What a load of utter tosh - and I'll bet the person concerned is licking his or her wounds already! You'll doubtless have seen all the headlines from the latter part of the week - John Lewis in a sales slump for example (type "John Lewis" into the WICS search engine and tell me if my Scary Granny's crystal ball is any good....in fact, type "crystal ball" in too if you have an hour or two to spare...) Taylor Wimpey is closing sales offices, B&Q is blaming wet weather for falling sales.....and so it goes on. Nobody loves bank shares (except all the numpties who took up the RBS rights issue) and Bradford & Bingley is in a right old mess of their own making. Their particular 'rights issue' price has been slashed from 82p to 55p and it would be a bargain at 10p perhaps. For all that, the "advisers" to B&B are going to collect £37m for doing very little. What a bunch! The UK Shareholders Association is "urging B&B shareholders to revolt" - ho ho ho. As if that would make the least difference. "Toothless" wouldn't begin to describe that lot. And while I'm in "rant mode" (as if!) how about the latest Marks & Sparks' directors' wheeze then? They know they'll never make their bonus targets in the recession, so what to do about it? No prizes for working out that they have simply slashed the targets! Hmmm, another shareholder revolt? Not a chance. And Lloyds TSB has teamed up with Northern Wreck to offer remortgages to customers of the latter, in a headline - grabbing manner. Gosh, so if your 125% loan is about to be called in and your house repossessed, good old Sir Lloyd of TSB is going to gallop to your rescue on his white horse and save you from the nasties then? I'm sure you can work it out with no help from this grumpy old fella - Lloyds will pick up the quality business and the taxpayer will collect the rubbish. I loved the Wreck's chief exec's statement: "The credit quality of our mortgages is in line with our business plan." Oh yes. In due course, the remaining good quality stuff will all have been moved on and what will then be the value of the remainder? Do UK taxpayers actually still believe they're going to see ANY of their £27bn or so again? What a shameless con from start to finish.

Moving along, I note that Bellway is suggesting that this year it will sell "10 - 15% fewer houses than in 2007". Doesn't sound too awful, does it? Hmm, 85% of last year's sales then? But would that be by VALUE? Or might the suggested 85% be achieved with just the tiniest bit of discounting? (if indeed they manage to hit that target anyway.) You decide! The CIPS (Chartered Institute of Purchasing & Supply) says that housebuilding data are the worst since records began, and that employment in the services sector (eg restaurants, hotels, insurance etc) is contracting for the first time in five years. Given that "services" represents a full 75% of the UK's very imbalanced economy, you'll understand that is not exactly good news. Indeed, Norwich Union has just announced it will dump 1800 employees over the next two years - and it won't be the last making such announcements for sure. Never mind, you can put your redundancy cheque into a Halifax 12% savings account.......with the odd wee string attached of course. A sure sign of desperation by Halifax, that's certain. Anything to get their statistics up in the short term, basically. A bit like Gordon's big bribe to the Nantwich electors really - and it will work just as well as that did. But Gordon is about to "do a Tony" and singlehandedly save the world from energy and food price rises, it seems. Anything to remove attention from reality, eh!

You'll doubtless have read a bit during the week about the American monoline insurers' current travails and the imminent danger of their credit ratings being downgraded. It's amazing how long it takes for the media to catch up with these fundamentally important stories....he said smugly. (Yes - type "monoline" into the WICS search engine....) Moody's and Standard & Poors (the so - called "ratings agencies") are under pressure NOT to cut the monoline ratings - I wonder why? - but they're going to have to do so pretty soon, and then you'll find out what a REAL credit crunch looks like! Buy UK retailers? You have simply got to be joking! You might as well buy airline shares...but to be fair, the lower - end food retailers will do well enough, because people still have to eat, even if money is tight - but folks won't be spending a lot in the likes of Marks & Sparks food halls methinks.

Speaking of airline shares, it seems that Continental - one of the big Yank carriers - (or is that carriers of big Yanks?) is dumping 3000 jobs. Warren Buffett's "take" on airlines as a business model is certainly an accurate one for sure. (He famously commented - slightly paraphased here - that the Wright brothers should have been shot before they got the whole sorry mess airborne.)

Next - scams this week are doubtless as plentiful as ever, but the three that really stood out were - first - the Rastogi family's huge metals trading thing that got them $750m or so from banks, and will doubtless now get them more than a couple of years in the choky. And the UK taxpayer is picking up the bill for their seven months' long defence - unlikely to be inexpensive. Then there's the ongoing broadband scam in the UK, where the claimed speeds are nothing like the true speed - mind you, if you think the UK's broadband is nothing to write home about, you should try Ireland some time (anywhere outside of Dublin).......But the biggest scam (other than the mishandling of Northern Wreck) surely has to be that of these (mostly) single premium 'insurance policies' that banks more or less force people to take out to 'protect' them from being unable to repay personal loans and credit cards. The Competition Commission reckons there's an overcharge of about £1.4bn there, with banks making up to 70% profit thereon. I could get to the stage of actually disliking banks, myself...

Anyway, there's probably lots more to speak about, but for now I'll content myself with looking at a chart or two, before you get the idea that I'm a cynic....First we'll take a fresh look at Ambac - one of these monoline insurers I mentioned above - just to let you see how far have the once mighty fallen - and maybe to reinforce my contention that buying shares 'for the long term' just makes no kind of sense at all. (And before the shareholders among you inundate me with three emails about 'dividends' - yes, I know about dividends and I'm still not remotely impressed.) Then we'll examine Savills again (in the search engine too!) because it's once more approaching an important area of support after its fall out of the countertrend channel that had formed since the New Year. Then we'll have a look at Wal Mart - it announced record profits during the week and would come into the same general area as the likes of Lidl and Aldi - albeit a tad bigger, but just as poor in terms of overall product quality - but that won't adversely affect the share price perhaps! Finally there's an update from last weekend of Granny's crystal ball 'take' on the S&P500 - a break of current support could see another fair old drop.

That's your lot then for this weekend - the gardener has decided that one of our walnut trees has to bite the dust so there's going to be a bit of sawing to do if I agree with the assessment - no lie down this sunny afternoon then! (Although doubtless there will be time for a wee beer on the terrace before dinner...it's a tough life for sure!)

All the best till next weekend

Ian.

PS - a couple of emails during the week arrived from those who believe Bill Gates is giving money away in exchange for people emailing as many others as possible in some kind of "aol beta testing". Trust me - it's a total scam - indeed it's a rehashed scam that has been on the go for years. Please don't be taken in by such rubbish. Try a Google search of "aol scam" or similar before wasting everyone's time - your own included of course.

'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'.