Hi there - doubtless many of you are meantime eagerly awaiting Mr Blair's personal email to tell you how stupid you were to have signed the "anti - road pricing" petition over the past few weeks......sp^m emanates from absolutely everywhere these days eh?

Moving along, 15000 Chrysler workers in the USA certainly received a pretty unpleasant Valentine's message last week - redundancy is never pleasant. The USA's car makers are in the deepest of trouble, that's for sure, and the American trade deficit announced last week is the biggest ever recorded ($763bn). Overall US unemployment is rising and manufacturing output is falling - and the relevant authorities expressed their 'surprise' at that announcement. Which parallel universe do they inhabit, I wonder?

In the UK, it seems Gordon has put his weight behind a bid for the 2018 soccer World Cup - would Wembley be ready in time I wonder? And it seems the Olympic Committee is "surprised and disappointed" at the slightly over - budget quote for building their stadium. "Negotiations are ongoing, based upon the £630m estimate we have now received" quoth one of the brilliant minds behind such matters, as he glossed smoothly over the fact that the original budget for that part of the financial black hole was a mere £280m. Never mind, road pricing will pay for everything.

On to the markets, and as noted last weekend, more "M&A" (Merger & Acquisition) activity is to be expected this year in my view - during the week of course, we saw some of that - with MyTravel being snapped up by Thomas Cook - I mentioned back in WICS of 9th April 2006 that MyTravel had attracted some 'big player' interest and that's the kind of thing it's always worth keeping an eye on. Sometimes these things take time to develop but hints are hints in this game!

Before we take a look at a couple of charts this weekend (Yes, I realise the weekend will be over before you can read these ramblings but that's just how it has to be this time!) I thought it might be helpful, as with last weekend, if I reproduce one of your emails in the interests of possibly helping a few of you, so here is the question and my answer thereto. It's worth reading carefully how my correspondent worded things: ".....I would like to continue to trade these but......." etc because therein is a dliemma faced by many aspiring traders.

And my reply:

"R.... - I guess you'll have already appreciated from reading the manual, that a methodology (ANY methodology) is absolutely crucial to success. Instincts & opinion only work occasionally, whereas a methodology works consistently - but only if you stick to it come what may. But don't misunderstand - the TTEW methodology is only one of thousands - it just happens to be a very simple one that works for me. Many of my students 'slice it & dice it' a little, to arrive at their OWN methodology - and they are the most successful, simply because they have gained confidence that they have evolved a methodology that works for them. In other words, TTEW is not 'cast in stone' but it's a great place to begin if that doesn't sound too immodest. Another thing maybe to bear in mind is that 'complicated' almost always works less well than 'straightforward' in this business, but many don't like to hear that because of their need to believe that what they do is difficult & complex & that they must be very clever to be able to do it. Don't fall into that trap.

Re 'volatility' - it can in fact be both good and bad - depending upon how you want to trade. Day traders need it, for example, as does anyone whose time frame is a short one - if markets don't move enough over say 3 hours or 3 days, you won't make a profit.

If however you seek a more 'relaxed' approach, then volatility is a bad thing, and certainly as regards my stocks/indices trading, I seek the 'steady' rather than the 'volatile', because I view trades as possibly remaining open for upwards of 6 months. (By the way, you mention '£250 - £400m' above - read '£200m approx & higher').

You say volatility has worked against you - the reason is because it doesn't suit you psychologically - simple as that. Otherwise you would be making it work for you & trading eg forex over short time frames.

Because you HAVE been trading essentially volatile markets (all those you mention are certainly volatile) while actually being probably unsuited to doing so, you'll have been essentially uncomfortable, and because of that, you couldn't develop a consistent approach - no surprises there.

Once you start becoming happy with trading in a more relaxed manner, over mostly longish timescales (maybe a few days only if the trade goes against you, & as mentioned above, maybe over 6 months otherwise) you may well find that the whole business becomes 'comfortable' & it's then your consistency & ability to trust your methodology, will start to bring in the profits. In other words, maybe for you, what will be 'best' is 'trend trading' - like TTEW - rather than 'swing trading' where you seek to grab a few points by exploiting volatile moves.

I don't know if this is going to help - I hope it might.

Ian."

Hopefully the foregoing - for what it's worth - may help some more of you too.

Moving on to today's charts then - loads of 'triangle - related' emails during the week, so let's examine these formations in AMEC and Scottish & Southern Energy to see what they might perhaps be telling us.

Finally this weekend, my thanks to all of you who have subscribed to the new Forex course - there have been a whole raft of mentoring requests from you, so in the interests of best serving you, I'll shortly be asking the publishers to put new applicants on to a waiting list. Once the initial email 'surge' has passed, I'm certain I'll once again be able to accept more subscriptions so if that happens to you, please be patient because I'm confident you WILL be able to subscribe in due course.

Oh yes - just one other thing - how do you feel about the new forum? It's probably a bit early to tell, but if you think it's either helpful or the opposite, please let me know.

Best Wishes

Ian.