Well, even more interesting stuff as the M&A pot boils over - now the USA's Nasdaq Exchange has formally bid for the London Stock Exchange - I wonder if the current 'Johnny Foreigner' thinking is going to be applied to that one?

(My reference to 'Johnny Foreigner' is of course occasioned by the somewhat hysterical outbursts of xenophobia that seem to be floating around some of the more recent international takeover bids - the Yanks for example seem a little distressed that the United Arab Emirates might end up running their major seaports, and the trade unions in Blighty seem a tad unhappy with BOC's fall into overseas ownership.)

Get used to it, guys. It's called 'free trade' and the alternative doesn't even bear thinking about.

Moving on, I note that credit card providers (particularly those involved with store cards) are to be required to put a 'wealth warning' on their products - yet another example of the 'They should do something' mentality that seeks to remove blame from those who trotted along into the mire entirely of their own volition. But I see that the warnings are only to be required on cards charging 'Over 25% APR'. That's all right then - 24.99% won't hurt you, so just keep right on spendin' folks!

There seems to be a bit of a change brewing though with the '0% balance transfer' brigade - I'm told that Capital One (which might well be in line for the Gold Medal in overall irresponsible lending) is offering quite a long '0%' period but unlike in the past, now with both a 'minimum spend' requirement and a 2% fee. It seems to me a tacit admission of major and growing arrears on their books - we shall see.

During the week, I received an email from one of you expressing 'disheartenment' with his trading. This feeling had been caused it seems by having had several trades fail, with a corresponding capital reduction in his trading bank.

Now it's not really in my gift to alter anyone's feelings nor perceptions, but I thought it might be worthwhile suggesting that several losing trades should be no reason at all for feeling discouraged.

Losing trades undoubtedly can cause annoyance, particularly if you can see (after the event of course) that they should never have been entered in the first place!

Believe me, I too can get pretty annoyed with myself from time to time - I doubt very much if anyone, however experienced, ever becomes totally immune to emotional input - I expect even Warren Buffet felt a bit upset when he wrote off about $1bn lately on his US Dollar 'sell trade'!

However, losing trades are just like London buses - they tend to come along in groups.

The good news of course is that so do winning trades!

A possibly useful way to look at the matter is to consider the tossing of a coin - 'probability' of course suggests that an evenly weighted coin will come up 'heads' 50% of the time, but how often do you imagine that any coin will come up 'heads' five times out of every ten throws?

Without delving deep into the (incredibly boring) arithmetic of why this is so, tossing a coin only ten times is pretty much meaningless - a hundred times is better, and a thousand is better still.

Therefore, in your own trading, (unless you are making a total c*ck*p of it all) to have seven or even eight losing trades out of any particular run of ten should cause you little overall anxiety, because if you are (properly) following a well proven methodology the matter will balance itself out in due course.

Within this TTEW methodology, you know I don't mind 50% of my trades to lose overall, because the 50% winners more than compensate. (An average loser over the past 12 months currently works out at about 1.6% of the bank, and a winner adds about 4.4% so you can see that overall things are fairly profitable, or at least I hope you can!)

It's the finding and then sticking to a valid methodology that removes the 'chance' element from your overall trading, but NOTHING can remove the strong probability of NOT having five out of ten winners, if you will forgive the double negative.

I have a couple of charts for you this weekend - a 'trendline probe' and a 'channel' - suitably annotated.

Next weekend's WICS (which will be written after the markets close on Friday 17th) won't be online till Monday 20th March, by the way - my webmaster too takes the odd break!

Also, I'm off to the Alps for a couple of weeks from Saturday 18th March so there will be no WICS the following weekend.

Due to various server issues my autoresponders will be working from (probably) Tuesday 14th March but despite that, I will be able to answer emails till early on Saturday morning 18th March. After that, I'll be back at my desk on Monday 3rd April.

Until Monday 20th, then, happy trading!

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'.