Well, here we are again at another weekend and a few more paragraphs of my ramblings, after a week during which the 'change' about which I bang on so frequently, would appear (at long, long last!) to be well under way - sufficiently so to be pretty visible now to most people. I refer of course to the 'trend change' from 'up' to 'down' in most of the world's major markets - we'll have a closer look at this on at least one chart below of course.

Lots of snippets from the last couple of weeks to attract my amusement, from Walmart executives allegedly 'on the take' to HSBC analysts getting very sniffy about Cable and Wireless' accounting practices - as if a bank were pure as the driven snow eh? (We'll look again at the chart of C&W below - last featured in WICS of April 29th if you care to have a look back through the archive.)

I mentioned a few weeks ago (anent Ryanair's EU ambassador Mr O'Leary's "kicking the competition" assertion, that I was a tad on the sceptical side regarding the true strength of the company - and indeed of budget airlines in general, so the recent profits warning from Ryanair has come as no real surprise. More trouble ahead, methinks. And staying with Ireland, Dell's recent decision to shed 7000 jobs will certainly have repercussions there - not that all of these will be lost in the Republic of course. A cynic (strangely enough, many - most? - of my friends are that way inclined) once suggested to me that the letters 'D E L L' stood for 'Doesn't Ever Last Long' and that could well prove more accurate than we might think right now. But there's certainly no depression meantime in the denim industry - I gather 86 million pairs of jeans were sold in the UK alone last year - and seemingly the industry worldwide has experienced 40% growth over the past 12 months. Now the question might be, is that entirely due to people buying more jeans, or just 40% bigger jeans? Hmmm, that's an interesting one to reflect on as we munch on our double emperor sized burger and slurp our extra gigantic fizzy drink......

Moving quickly along, it looks like President Tony's attempts to gag the enquiry into BAE's alleged slush fund have run into stormy waters - I'm delighted to observe, nasty person that I am. No doubt the head of the Serious Fraud Office's eagerness to take the heat off the Attorney General will result in some kind of so -called 'honour' for him in the fullness of time - there's a lot of dirty work around that particular crossroads for sure, and there will be lots more to come on that front - not necessarily to the benefit of BAE shareholders either.

Next, I note that Tesco has certainly found a novel way to 'go green' - buy a garden centre and there you are. Costly? Nah, not really - just two days' takings!

And only a paltry £400m has been wasted on the Olympics logo (so far) - somebody must have kept a tighter than usual grip on the purse strings there. Honestly, it's such a shame they didn't ask my wife to do it for them - as her business manager, I would have insisted that for such a good cause, she would have offered a 50% discount.

Finally, before we look at some charts, I thought I would share a recent email with you because it represents a sentiment that is inevitably going to affect every single one of us from time to time - my correspondent was suggesting that he had discovered a great trading methodology, based on other people taking the opposite side of every trade HE decides to open. His thesis is that if HE takes a 'buy', then everyone else should sell, because the price is inevitably going to rise just high enough to open his trade and then immediately head south and stop him out for a full loss. My reply was that that could well be an excellent idea! Seriously, that's something that truly does happen to all of us from time to time, myself included - and there's no real answer other than perhaps to take a break from trading for a while because either it means you're not seeing the market objectively, or you're just in a bit of a pessimistic mood (or both). There will ALWAYS be 'runs' of losing trades in the same way that there will ALWAYS be winning runs too - as I have suggested several times, we can reasonably expect around 50% of our trades to lose money over time, but that doesn't mean you'll 'lose one, win one, lose one, win one .....'! Every time it has been warm and sunny over the past couple of weeks, and I take my jumper off, the clouds appear in seconds - I'm certain they have been hiding behind the mountain just waiting for an opportunity to get at me. I could get a bit paranoid (easy enough!) or I could just accept that statistically that's the way it goes - and my somewhat weatherbeaten look would suggest the clouds don't really have it in for me overall.

In reality, if you're following any kind of decent methodology and you have a few losers in a row, the worst thing to do is remove yourself from that methodology, because as sure as Tony is an alien, you'll 'sit out' a few trades that 'would have been winners' and then you'll jump back in, straight into another run of losers. Far better is to turn the computer off for a couple of weeks and don't even LOOK at the markets! Try the 'jumper on and off' trick for a while - it's cheaper!

And finally finally....I was delighted to read of the Brighton police chief's paper on the effect of the full moon vis a vis the cyclic nature of alcohol intake and aggressive behaviour.....so at long last I have found the answer ....and I'll slap anyone who suggests otherwise. Seriously, I don't drink that much - mostly I spill it.

Anyway, onward to a few charts, and first we'll look at Cable & Wireless as mentioned above, then we'll take a look at Ricardo, just to answer another email where the question concerned the fact that sometimes I appear to be looking at a potential trade (in either direction) where the relevant DMAs are still pointing the 'wrong' way per TTEW - my reply was one word - 'anticipation' and I hope you'll be able to see what I mean when I said that. Finally we'll examine the 'biggie' - the Dow Jones Industrial Average - and see how the last and steepest part of the uptrend has now both been probed to the downside and has retraced sharply.....which means??

And that should do for this weekend, so happy trading until next time - late Saturday pm 16th June or some time on Sunday 17th, depending upon my webmaster's commitments.

All the best until then,

Ian.