Another day of wall to wall sunshine in the mountains, and here am I, slaving over a hot keyboard to share today's ramblings with you. As if I don't enjoy a wee rant, eh? In any case, with the start of the mid term holidays, the ski slopes are just a tad on the busy side and there will be more than a few of my least favourite people scraping around the hill......for those of you who are new to these mutterings, the reference is to snowboarders - those sad looking creatures who move around the mountain in little packs, either dragging a cumbersome board behind them, or having a "group sit'n drag on fag", spread across the middle of the piste exactly where normal people need to get past. It's not that Williams is remotely intolerant, you understand.....

Anyway, moving along to matters of more immediate interest, and it seems that Punch Taverns and Mitchells & Butlers are planning an all - share merger (ie one where no actual cash changes hands other than the usual fat commissions to the undeserving). If you look at both the charts you'll see that the latter is perceived to be more likely to benefit from the marriage than is Punch - hardly surprising given the crazy (failed) property deal they planned last summer. However, as with most (all?) such marriages, blending the juice of two lemons doesn't actually create anything sweeter - as witness Mr Taylor Woodrow's nuptials with Ms Wimpey a while back. Take a look at THAT chart too! (Taylor Wimpey).

The latest Ryanair profits warning comes as no surprise either - the previous one was mentioned in WICS of June 9th 2007 if you're interested. Mr O'Leary won't be too far wrong when he is now suggesting that recession will kill off "environmentalism" - but he may find a formidable opponent as regards "eco" issues now that Saint Tony of Islington has decided that HE has acquired a "keen interest in environmental issues" to accompany all his other recently discovered keen interests. I refer to the fact that Supertone has become an "environmental adviser" to Zurich Financial - who just happen to own Eagle Star, who just happen to be seeking to build a so - called "eco town" in Hampshire. But apparently (according to an Eagle Star spokesperson) Tony will have "no role" as regards "anything" to do with that......Ho Ho Ho - and if you happen to be a UK taxpayer, doesn't it just gladden your heart to know that YOU too are contributing a tiny amount to Supertone's (so clearly well deserved) retirement package? And still anent "eco towns" - surely these deserve "scam of the year" status? I see that they (ten in total) are to be built on "brownfield sites" but the biggest so far discovered (nobody knows yet, exactly where all are to be located - open government is a great thing) is to be built in Derbyshire......in a National Park. Hmm. "Brownfield" as in "Gordon Brownfield" then.

Anyway, it may well be that nothing will happen because imminent recession will probably kill them (eco towns) off - which goes to show that recession isn't all bad news. Certainly the likes of bookies and debt collectors, not to mention pawnbrokers - and the hire companies I mentioned the other week - tend to benefit from the bad times. Perhaps you can think of companies that tend to do badly in recession? How about Marks & Sparks food department? Travel Agents? Slightly posh hotels? (top hotels won't fare badly because there are enough rich folks not to worry, and fleapits too won't suffer, but 'nice' places to stay will feel the pinch). Starbucks coffee? (I note they have brought in the $1 cup in the USA - a change from the $4+ of last year. But maybe you don't actually get coffee in the cup any more of course...not that it was ever that strong anyway.)

Unfortunately, many people will NOT benefit from the coming recession - BP plans to offload 5000 jobs by the summer and there are plenty more redundancies to come. House repossessions are already running at three times the 2004 rate according to the Council of Mortgage Lenders. But the Darling glove puppet still asserts that the UK is far better placed to weather the storm than is the USA because British banks didn't lend irresponsibly. Yeah, right.

And in the USA, retail sales in 2007 were "the worst in 40 years" according to figures from UBS.

The Bank of England of course gave in to Gordon and reduced interest rates - no surprise there - and will do so again. Inflation is better than recession if you're seeking re - election. Yet more destruction of the ordinary person's savings - nothing ever really changes. And Northern Wreck of course has been "reclassified" as a public corporation - but it hasn't been nationalised......eh? Could somebody please explain the practical difference to this country boy? Only £100m of taxpayers' cash at risk. A mere pittance compared to the £1bn "lost/missing/defrauded" (take your pick) in tax credits - not to mention the same amount "missing" from Defra's budget.

Finally, before you get the idea that Williams has a grumpy streak, and before we move on to today's charts, I want to share an extremely thoughtful email received from one of you during the week - PLEASE consider it carefully and apply it to YOUR approach to this business!

"Hi Ian
Am I right in the following statement? Trading opportunities present themselves when one looks at the market with TTEW, but rarely are they for today, or even this week.
Gradually, however, the practitioner of your method will, with patience, move to a situation where he has a number of trades active, for which he has waited until they became"ripe", and at that point there will always be some more in the pipeline. This generates the revenue stream. The hard part for the beginner is waiting for the first picks to reach the point when they are active.
It's better than getting up at 7.30 every morning to scan the RNS in the hope of a quick buck though!
Kind regards,
Ernie".

My reply was pretty simple:

"Ernie - I couldn't put it better. I'll pinch this for WICS.

Ian".

On to today's charts then, and first we'll examine that of Serco just to show that sometimes "triangles" can take a long time to form but when you see one it might be worth putting that chart in your "watch list" - per Ernie's perceptive email above - and considering what you might seek to do. Then we'll look at a much shorter - term triangle on the chart of Home Retail and note too how recent support was broken. Finally there's a nice "down channel" after an uptrend on the chart of Weir Group. It held well on earlier support and there has been a probe back up followed by a retrace. (To learn more about such formations, type the above terms into the WICS search engine). And that should be plenty for this weekend - so I'm off now to spend an hour or so on a sunny terrace, clutching a wee drinkie and watching the snow bunnies.....a harmless pastime I assure you!

All the best until next weekend.

Ian.

'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'.