Hello again - it certainly doesn't look as though very much of anything has happened over the last few days while the Williams entourage was travelling - Gordon Gecko is still enjoying his wee honeymoon with the UK public, although I see he's still up to his Chancellor - style tricks, promising extra cash for flood defences with one side of his forked tongue while cutting back overall Environment Agency funding with the other side. Not a lot changes when it comes to the promises made by politicians - that's a certainty!

And I note that Local Authority pension funds now plan to scrutinise 'defence' companies just in case they have been bribing anyone or otherwise acting unethically.......hmmm - decades of selling weapons to certain Middle East and African dictatorships (among others) WASN'T unethical then, while these pension funds were happily buying the shares of BAE et al? Hypocrisy is a great thing while profits are being made - so if such share prices are now suffering from a sudden case of "havingbeenfoundoutitis" - well, tough luck - and good luck with the investigations. If the Serious Fraud Office was warned off the case, what chance of getting anywhere will a Local Authority have?

Still on hypocrisy, I note that the Norwegian government is sticking its nose in to matters fraudulent - it wants to set up an international task force (tax force?) to feel the collars of tax evaders everywhere, on the pretext that do so will alleviate poverty throughout the third world. Yeah, right.

Moving along, it looks like the whole 'Toxic Waste' thing I have mentioned a couple of times recently (type the phrase into the WICS search engine to find earlier references) is beginning to hit the headlines - another US hedge fund that holds quite a lot of that rubbish has just stopped investors from withdrawing their cash - a total shock to the investors of course because (perfectly understandably) most people think that if they put money into a 'fund', they can get it back pretty much when they want, albeit perhaps with a wee bit of prior notice. My advice to anyone with any kind of 'fund' investment? Read the small print! This whole collateralised debt thing is going to implode any time now, because the 'values' that most of those involved are still touting, are totally and utterly divorced from any kind of economic reality. Just as with the 'tech stocks' fiasco of a few years ago, an awful lot of innocent people are going to see their capital vanish - yet the Moms and Pops are still piling in to a market that's as close to the top as it's likely to get for several years to come - just as they always do. History lessons are SO boring - nobody wants to listen to them!

Anyway, it's so much more exciting to 'be invested' than to have cash earning buttons in a boring old bank account, isn't it? Maybe I've mentioned the odd time that TRADING provides quite an interesting alternative approach? I can't quite recall.

Moving on to a recent email from one of you (thanks Clive for such an interesting point) I thought it would be worth including it today because perhaps it might strike a chord with more than one of you.(I have 'topped and tailed' the actual message a little.)

"Ian, just to let you know that I'm enjoying TTEW but I do have to make some drastic changes in my attitude, being someone who tends to be rather on the emotional side - and I know that you say we need to remove emotion from trading - easier said than done for me I suspect! Any thoughts? Regards, Clive."

My reply was:

"Clive - yes, you need to try to eliminate emotion from the trading arena, and that can be easier said than done for sure. Perhaps it might be worth 'thinking yourself' into a role as some kind of ruthless 'City type' while you're in front of your screen. I reckon that overall I'm no more nor less emotional than any other ordinary person, but when I'm trading, I take on a different persona altogether. Over the years, I've developed the ability to separate the 'trading me' from the 'non trading me' and with practice, it's probable that anyone can do likewise. Maybe actors would make great traders in fact!"

OK - moving on to today's charts then, first we'll examine Minerva, which formed a channel and then fell below earlier support - a bearish signal. Then we'll have another wee look at Renishaw, last featured here on 11th February - just to show how careful you need to be regarding Directors' Deals. If you refer back to 11th February you'll see that I was a tad sceptical about the possible reason for the big purchase......and finally we'll have a look at 'rolling resistance' off a daily moving average on the chart of Topps Tiles.

And just one final word today (again, type it into the WICS search engine!) - PATIENCE.

Until next weekend then.

Ian.