Hello again, and a very Happy New Year to you! I hope you enjoyed a great festive break and that you're raring to begin looking for profits in 2009 - there should certainly be more than a few great opportunities this year for traders - not a lot for "investors" though! In fact there's some pretty disturbing news to report if you actually own shares - astronomers seemingly have made a mistake in their calculations, and the Andromeda Galaxy is set to crash into ours much sooner than expected. Not enough time left to make a profit from share ownership I'm afraid - a mere 7.9bn years by current calculations.

Anyway, according to most headlines over this past week (and I confess to having paid less attention than usual to what's going on - virtually the entire Williams clan and assorted hangers - on decided to invade over an extended festive season, and even the IW office became a bedroom for over a week......aaghh.) 2008 was the "worst year ever" for world stockmarkets, so it's good to be informed that 2009 will be much better. Bloomberg's recent survey of economists and fund analysts has produced a consensus figure in the USA that the S&P500 will end 2009 "17% up". Ho ho ho. Later in these ramblings you'll read what my Really Scary Granny's crystal ball has to say.....

But first, a few snippets - not a lot today to be honest, because as mentioned above, the festives were on the hectic side to say the least. Someone I know pretty well from the shaving mirror had one of these annoying "milestone" birthdays and a surprise had been planned - hence the unexpected descent of the masses and a total mess as far as trying to work was concerned. Grumpy old man? Moi? Surely not! But I detest having people sleep in the office - an invasion just a wee bit too far.

Anyway, onward - and it seems the Broon one's cunning plan to give those in mortgage arrears a "payments holiday" has backfired a wee bit, in that lenders are holding money back to pay for it and thus handing out even fewer new mortgages. Hasty legislation and knee jerk reactions may not be the best way forward. Anyway, with UK interest rates the lowest ever and likely to drop even lower, interest - only mortgages will soon be free anyway. Banks will owe YOU money if you're on a "1% below base rate" tracker deal. Now there's a thought! As far as Broon's other great idea to provide £1bn in loan guarantees for small businesses is concerned, the word is that it's pretty much "inaccessible". Did anyone really think otherwise? And as to the government's current assertion that the projected £15bn shortfall in stamp duty and IHT revenues was "entirely unexpected" - oh dear. I'm not going to bother listing all the reasons why they are complete morons - the IW resolution for 2009 is to try to stop stating the glaringly obvious. Honest! The other resolution was to try to be nice to snowboarders, but that one has already gone by the board. ("Board" - geddit? Oh, please yourself then.) Off topic for a moment, 2009 will be the ski season when a lot more bad accidents than previously, will occur. The current fetish anent adults wearing crash helmets is definitely causing too many complete idiots to ski far too fast and way beyond their ability - a bit like car airbags making such people feel invulnerable I guess.

Back to matters economic then, and according to the TUC, British workers provided their employers with £27bn worth of unpaid overtime in 2008, or an average of £5000 a year each. There's generous for you - although it's not stopping jobs being lost more or less wherever you look. Some pundits have been suggesting that the weak £sterling is great for exports. Hmmm, so what is going to be left to export? Bailout requests are everywhere of course - the most amusing currently is that the US porn industry is asking the Fed for $5bn - maybe they'll even get it if they have managed to capture the right people on video.....and even poor Lara Croft has lost her popularity these days - Eidos (owners of the game) have announced a profits warning. There have been so many profits warnings lately - and so many companies going bust, that I'm sure you need no further mention thereof via these ramblings - although doubtless some will be mentioned here as the year progresses.

On to "really silly" stuff and the RICS says house prices will rise 10% this year as "opportunists" enter the market. And government buildings "emit more CO2 than all of Kenya". Oh yes, and a new Sheffield primary school isn't one. It's seemingly a "place for learning". How idiotic can local government officials be? No answer required!

Next today, here's an interesting email from one of you - thanks Chris - it's always a good idea to do as Chris has done if and when you get a moment:

" Hi Ian

I have just completed a very small and unscientific bit of research but I thought you may be interested. After being ‘bribed’ to go shopping with my better half on 3 occasions this week I decided to visit the outlets of some of the shares I have been either trading or looking at.

The results are:

NEXT – More women returning clothes than buying. Mens sale rubbish and no customers on any day.

CARPETRIGHT – No customers seen in the store until today (only 1 elderly couple). At 3pm I was only the 2nd customer the salesman had spoken to.

DSG (Currys) – Absolutely packed. Not many sale items or discounts to be seen but a lot of people interested in the new large ‘digital ready’ TV’s & VCR replacements etc. Wondering why, then remembering our area switches to digital from March.

M&S- Same demographic as always, rubbish sale.

This is only one small seaside town so doesn’t compare to the big shopping centres but does help my thoughts. Have to see what the retail numbers say this week.

All the best & Happy New Year.

Chris"

That sort of research makes a huge amount of sense if you have the opportunity to do it - and it doesn't bode that well for Next in particular methinks. The investors of the world seem to believe it's a "buy"...........you decide!

Anyway, moving on to my Really Scary Granny's crystal ball and its predictions for 2009 - two major ones in fact. Markets will either go up a lot, or down a lot......Only kidding - I can probably do a bit better than that! There are two major predictions in fact, as far as TTEW is concerned.

The first prediction is that this will be the year when some almost unbelievable scams are uncovered. The end of 2008 saw the exposure of the Madoff Ponzi scheme of course - but it is only the tip of an iceberg. Hedge funds after all can report "unrealised" gains and book these on their balance sheets. Remove a few letters from "unrealised" and you arrive at "unreal".......Not all hedge funds are run by crooks, that is certain - but you'll see more than a few in deep trouble with the law as this year progresses. There is just too much crookedness still in the financial world - the UK taxpayer has just been landed with a $350m fine from the Yanks, because Lloyds Bank has been found out regarding a money laundering scam - moving funds from Sudan and Iran into US bank accounts. Bankers, eh? And although the current thing around Primark and TNS is pretty small beer really, it points to things being "found out" that people would rather leave hidden. A lot more "finding out" is going to happen this year.

Prediction number two is that although stock markets will probably take a bit of a hammering for another couple of months, at some stage in 2009 there will be a major rally that will have the pundits falling over themselves to claim that the recession has ended and all is well again in the world. "Great buying opportunities" will be everywhere and Joe and Jill Investor will be sucked in as usual. The rally may well last several months, but before the year end, it will have totally fizzled out and stock markets will once again be heading for the depths. This deflationary recession/depression is only just beginning - mention was made here a while ago that this mess is going to last several years, and the crystal ball is not saying anything meantime to contradict that view. So as the year progresses, traders are going to be able to get some pretty decent "buys" as the bounce develops - and then lots of lovely "sells" when the big drop recommences. Just don't lose sight of the fact that even in the rally, there will be "sells", just as in the drop, there may well be the odd "buy". Generally, the charts will guide us. We'll be discussing that kind of thing every week of course - whether in the video updates or here - or of course in both. In due course, there are going to be some fantastic buying opportunities in the fields of property and "stuff" in general - the day WILL arrive when things won't get any cheaper, and market sentiment will turn positive once more, leading to the next big bull market. But the crystal ball quite definitely suggests that date is a few years away yet.

OK - on that note, onward to a chart or two. Tonight we'll start by examining British Sky Broadcasting anent possibly "conflicting signals" and what the trend change might mean when compared with the channel. Then we'll do the same for Marks & Sparks, where there's a triangle in an ongoing downtrend - or has that now been negated by the trendline probe? Decisions, decisions! Finally we'll take a look at the FTSE250, which we haven't examined here for a very long time. Was there a bit of a falling wedge towards the end of last year? (A generally bullish signal). Is there now enough resistance below 7000 to suggest a "buy" above that figure? Could you afford the necessary minimum stop loss of over1000 points? (That's why I stopped covering it in WICS a long time ago - too many people were trying to trade it with their SL way too tight and they just kept losing money no matter what I suggested to them in reply to their somewhat distressed emails. You can take a horse to water......I won't complete that homily by using what my late and much missed Dad used to say - it was a tad on the rude side!)

Anyway, that's yer lot for today - as mentioned at the start, a very Happy New Year to you. The sun is shining, the snow is wall to wall, and there are two whole hours left before the lifts close, so nae prizes for working out where I'm heading now....Oh, by the way, if you have had about 4 months' worth of these ramblings and the videos at no charge, be prepared for a password change at the end of this month. If you wish to continue to suffer these mutterings - I obviously hope you DO wish to! - there is a printable standing order form at www.trading-the-easy-way.com/stoform.htm - please print it off and return it to the address at the top thereof, NOT direct to your bank please.

OK - time to get the planks on the feet again - see you next weekend as usual!

Ian.

PS - hopefully, if you have made a resolution or two for 2009, one of them is described by the word PATIENCE......it is always a requirement in order to trade successfully - and for sure, it's going to be a major feature of 2009!

'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'.