Welcome to another annoyingly non - snowy weekend. What a whinger this guy Williams is - if I were you, I would find something else to read! Who else would be moaning to all who would listen (ie only the poor dog, who must surely be getting pretty fed up too by now) that there has been wall to wall sunshine since last weekend? There was a brief false alarm last Sunday when a few wee flakes appeared but they were obviously just a scouting party. Anyway, there you are - I keep preaching 'patience' at you when it comes to trading, but in reality I can be as impatient as the next person and right now I'm climbing the walls! Aaaghh....but at least I'm still sane - I'm fairly sure that Josephine popped her head round the office door to tell me we were going to have a 'boring dinner' and that she didn't say 'Borodino'....

Anyway, on to the markets before your true suspicions are fully confirmed - and 'up' is still the direction right now - it's not only myself that's doing the climbing. It's always nice to have made the correct call regarding market direction (makes up for all my incorrect calls!) and as suggested the other weekend (26th November) the drop back then in the FTSE 100 has indeed proved to have been only a retrace in the current overall uptrend. Whither next? Onward and upward methinks. The Santa effect will ensure that, although another retrace on Monday would come as no surprise either. It's going to be well into the New Year before we see much of a drop in European markets, although those in the USA might now be reaching their peak and could begin the long drop when markets reopen at the beginning of January. We'll see.

As regards individual stocks, BAE certainly got their Christmas present a little early - never let it be said that you don't have a highly principled Prime Minister.

It's fairly probable that the rise in BAE's price will help boost the shares of Rolls Royce and Smiths Group in due course, given the usual knock - on effect that tends to happen, but remember what I suggest about 'trading rumours and exiting facts' - you need to examine the charts and decide what action to take based upon what you see there - not on 'The News'. I'm not putting up either chart today because you can have a look for yourself - you might see that nothing grabs you on one, but that something might be brewing on the other one....

I see the 'Consumer Price Inflation' (CPI) Index is at an 'all time high' even though it's a total fudge - if 'They' couldn't fudge it enough to avoid that outcome, what does it REALLY say about overall inflation? More UK interest rate rises to come then.

There's really not a great deal else going on in this pre - Christmas 'phoney war' period - I understand perfectly Alan Sugar's comment that from about now till early January, he sits around waiting for the world to open again for business - I'm not entirely sure how I might cope with a snow and visitor - free holiday period but it certainly looks like I'm about to find out, much to the trepidation of my wife! At least there's still a huge pile of logs to deal with so I have an excuse to run amok with my chainsaw.....

On to the charts before you call the authorities, and today we'll look briefly at how 'The News' can be unreliable as a trading indicator: Bloomsbury (They could use some magic now!) fell dramatically on a 'profit warning' but Amec didn't - mainly because the latter company has some pretty tricky accountants and they have indulged in the good old 'share buy back' trick - no magic in that.

Then we'll examine the Admiral chart again (last featured on 19th November, and before that, on 29th October) because maybe it's going to do something of interest to us - and we'll look too at Murray Income Trust. Finally there's a chart of Northern Foods, just as an update of my remark about its 'possible change of pattern' a couple of weeks ago.

And that's your lot for this weekend - as mentioned in the last offering, I might possibly do another WICS on the 24th December because of being such a sad person, but don't bank on it because either it will have snowed by then and I'll be skiing, or I'll have wrapped myself round a bottle of very old Armagnac and gone into hibernation till January. If I don't speak to you again till after the New Year, the next WICS will be on 7th January, and in the meantime I trust you will enjoy a happy, peaceful Festive Season and that 2007 will prove a prosperous year for you.

All the best,

Ian.

PS - yes, I know that AMEC is vastly bigger than Bloomsbury and has loads of spare cash, so a share buyback is easy to engineer, whereas for a small company with limited funds it can be impossible - but that simply reinforces my point that 'news' is not a good basis upon which to trade.

'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'.