Hello again after last weekend's enforced break in my musings.

As seems to be my wont these days, I'll start today's nonsense with a 'PS', just to make sure you read it before you fall asleep.
This is more of a plea than a PS, really - a 'poor little overworked me' plea!
The thing is, answering your emails is taking up more and more of my time (not that I'm complaining, because I enjoy hearing from you) but believe it or not, I do have a life outside of TTEW.
Therefore, given that doing things the easy way is how I try to run my entire life, you'll understand why I answer your mail without much formality and by simply clicking the 'reply' button. I seldom if ever start a new email to you.
So what? - Well, some of you still haven't moved away from email addresses ending in ntlworld or tesco.net, despite my having asked you to, both via previous issues of WICS, and individually from one of my own alternate email addresses.
Come on, folks - help me to help you! If this applies to you, I'm afraid this is your final message about the problem. Either you send me a fresh email address that works properly, or you don't, but it's entirely up to you. Knowing there is a 90% chance of a bounceback, I will no longer answer mails from either of the above addresses, simple as that. Having an alternate email address is only common sense, in any event.

OK - moving on to more interesting matters, what about the markets then?

Well, The Guardian has the answer - it has the answer to everything, after all. I quote a headline from yesterday's Money section: "With The FTSE100 At a 3 Year High, It Could Be Time To Invest". I won't quote from the article itself, because I would need to lie down in a darkened room for a couple of hours to recover, but my goodness, it truly amazes me how much rubbish can be written by those who claim to have some kind of formal education.
There's not a lot of doubt that Maurice Marketmaker has been buying a few nice lunches for journalists again, nor is there much doubt that the FTSE100 will continue to head still higher for a few more weeks as those in the know, carefully sell into the rising market. Probably the same will apply to the wider market and the FTSE250 is also likely to keep heading upwards for a while yet.
It's not at all surprising to read the sort of rubbish being put out by the likes of The Guardian - it's merely a reflection of the fact that people are beginning to suspect they are 'missing out' and need to start buying shares before prices really rocket. Don't worry, folks - they are NOT going to rocket and if you don't buy now, you WILL miss out - on a serious loss!

Anyway, in my view (and the usual caveat applies - 'views' are truly dangerous things to believe) things have not altered since I last suggested that European markets, including those in the UK, have some 'legs' left to the upside before they start to roll over and die.
I can even see the FTSE100 getting pretty close to 5500, after its remarkably strong recovery from the dreadful events of 7th July. Any drop below the low of that morning, will however signal the end of the rally and the resumption of the long term bear market.

Across the pond, however, I can see all the wee lemmings lining up right at the cliff edge, shuffling slowly towards it but facing the opposite way, full of joyful anticipation of sunny, profitable times ahead and with no idea at all of their true direction. There, I reckon the clifftop is truly crumbling right now, and I wouldn't like to be standing too near the edge unless I had a nice big parachute.
Another couple of weeks at most, in my opinion, before good ol' Uncle Sam leads the way into the abyss.

Why do I think so? Because by every measure (and I'm not going to bore you with statistics from my various sources) optimism is at an all time high, and on the likes of Bloomberg, that bastion of utter banality, long term 'bears' have been publicly 'admitting' that they have been wrong all along, begging forgiveness for their sins, and joining the good guys at long last.
I note that I haven't yet received a request from the media for an interview.

However, despite all this craven bullishness, US markets actually stopped rising in the bear market rally, about 18 months ago, other than for a brief spell from about January till March this year. Not only that, but on most 'up' days, breadth has been very poor - ie the rises have been caused by increases in the price of SOME stocks, not MOST stocks. That's not a sign of underlying market strength, believe me.
No, I suspect the USA economy is out of gas and running on vapour, and the real bears are going to come out and spoil the picnic any time now - it's just possible that you'll see some great trading opportunities as a result!

Moving along, I mentioned in a previous WICS that repayment of the UK's massive credit card debt 'just ain't gonna happen' and one or two of you took issue with that remark - to clarify, I meant that repayment of MUCH of it won't happen, because a huge number of debtors simply won't be able to repay their commitments. In 2004, £1.6 BILLION was written off by banks as 'uncollectable' and this year, ALL the High Street banks have already warned that 'bad credit card debts will cause problems'.

Regarding charts today, I've put up two of the same share (Autonomy) just to help reinforce my comments the other weekend about 'the Really Big Picture' and the need to consider different timescales in the trading environment.

The next chart is a self explanatory update on Tate & Lyle (featured in WICS of 3rd July), and the final one today is of William Hill, which may be worth watching.

Finally today, perhaps something is happening with Matalan? Find a chart, have a look, and see what you think.

My best wishes, as always, till next weekend.
Ian.

PS: Spreadex have let me know they're offering a bottle of Bollinger to those TTEW students opening new spread betting acounts with them - just the thing for a warm summer's evening!
Anyway, I know you'll check them out to see if they might suit your trading needs, and you won't open an account purely on the basis of free booze - in any event, you'll need to have completed a couple of trades with them before your bottle arrives, which of course is fair enough. Overall, I find they are pretty good. Here's the link if you're interested:

'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'.