Well, another weekend rolls around - it seems like less than a couple of days since the last lot of these ramblings were produced! It's the end of another ski season and the Williams family is feeling a tad unsettled as a result - it was one of the snowiest winters ever and it's quite weird to see greenery sprouting everywhere again all of a sudden, and to hear the swallows twittering merrily as they sit on the roof, enjoying the sunshine. The last family member leaves us on Wednesday and the house will become quiet again, bar the IW swearie words emanating from the office when yet another "economist" or politician comes out with another pearl of wisdom. Oh well, it will soon be time to get the fishing rods out! (Which reminds me - just a wee "heads up" about the overall speed of the IW responses to mentoring emails from mid May to mid June approximately - fairly major building work at the farmhouse is scheduled for then, and the inevitable noise of sawing and hammering etc means that Mme W and I are simply going to leave 'em to it. We're taking ourselves off to Scandinavia for about 6 weeks, starting on 11th May, and although emails will be dealt with and some videos/WICS will be produced, "normal" service is inevitably going to be interrupted quite a bit.)

Anyway, onward to today's mutterings - and the theme perhaps is "bad timing". First there's the teachers in England demanding a 10% pay rise, or an extra £3000 a year - whichever is the greater. Hmm, have they maybe not heard that Wee Allie's red briefcase has very few Poonds left in it? "Red" is an appropriate enough colour these days for sure as regards the coming budget. And in Spain, where jobs are vanishing "faister nor sna' aff a dyke" (try "faister" in the search engine to get the translation) the plan is to deny beach bars permission to operate. It's only a €900m industry that provides around 30000 seasonal jobs after all.......politicians are total idiots.

Still on the "bad timing" theme, it appears that Bernanke (US Fed chairman) "sees signs of an economic recovery" - IW can see Easter Bunnies still hopping around everywhere he looks......and the latest recruit to the Bank of England's N Team believes "the recession may be over." Wee Allie the Pretend Chancellor says he "expects a recovery in the UK economy later this year." Oh dear. The loonies truly are in charge of the asylum these days - a wee lakeside cabin in the depths of a Scandinavian forest appeals more and more! (Before you ask - yes - "N" is for "Numpty".)

There's little point in speculating about the UK budget - as mentioned in an earlier WICS, it's much later than usual this year - so that Wee Allie could consult with the Easter Bunny - and it will consist pretty much of "borrow more, spend more, tax more". Seemingly there's a plan to provide another £50bn in "guarantees" to "kickstart" the mortgage market. Great idea - get the punters borrowing again - that will solve everything. And in particular, get people buying houses again so that even more people end up in negative equity when prices drop another 40% or so over the next few years........duh. And as for the plan to sell off what's left of the UK's family silver (Royal Mail, the Mint, the Met Office etc) - well, there's a precedent of course for dumping stuff at the bottom of the market. The Broon one's sale of UK gold reserves a few years ago (for a whole $250 an ounce!) has been mentioned here more than once.

And as for silly ideas that might sound good to the sheep - how about this idea to "name and shame" tax evaders? What a lot of nonsense - speaking of which, there's the "electric vehicle" thing mentioned last weekend. Now it appears there's a plan to provide grants of £5000 to those who buy an electric vehicle. That will be similar to the scheme that allegedly provides grants to those who want to install solar panels in their homes, or convert their car to lpg then - ie the money is more or less impossible to obtain because of all the barriers that have been set up. But it sounds good! A government minister is seemingly saying that £250m is being allocated to "decarbonise Britain". Ho ho ho. That amount would decommission about a quarter of one coal fired power station - but in fact the plan is to build another three thereof......and if any member of the public dares to raise his or head above the parapet and "make noises" about that particularly lunatic idea, they can expect to have their collars felt by Britain's sensitive, caring and considerate police service, on the grounds of "national security". It's truly amazing what Joe and Jill Public seem prepared to put up with these days, and oftentimes this grizzled old bear feels a sense of just shrugging his shoulders and thanking his stars he walked away from the UK years ago. Ahhh, I can smell the pine trees already, and feel that lovely two kilo brown trout putting a nice bend in the fly rod........a trader's life is just so hard.....

Anyway, enough of my troubles and moving along - a very good question came from "Sally" during the week and it's worth mentioning the matter here. Sally said some very kind things in her email, so modesty precludes replicating it here, but essentially the question was about the effects of any tax increases in the imminent UK budget. Sally suggested that tax hikes take money out of the economy, because people/businesses need to find the cash to pay them, and thus at a time when things are pretty dire - in the High Street for example - wouldn't more tax increases just make things even worse and cause even more jobs to be lost in a vicious downwards spiral? Sally - you're bang on the money with that idea! That's the real problem - tax increases are necessary to fund all the Keynesian nonsense that's floating around (ie spend more and more borrowed money on "projects" to try to keep people in jobs) but in fact all that happens is the economy shrinks anyway, and less and less money becomes available to the government, no matter what/how they tax. Rather than my banging on about it here, try the name "Bastiat" in the search engine for a bit more about stuff that generates no real benefit to the overall economy. Essentially that's why these ramblings keep banging on about a much bigger collapse after the current bear market rally fizzles out. It's a great time to be a trader, of that there is no doubt! And if you're planning to "buy stuff" that you could actually do without for a while, your patience will be rewarded if you have the cash available in due course. For example (if you like collecting really good timepieces - as I do) there's a new pawnbroker operating in the City of London now, and my sources tell me a lot of the stuff in the shop won't be redeemed - and we're not talking about £20 Timex watches here........bargains will abound in due course - but not just yet.

On that note, onward to a chart or two and we'll start with that of Galliford Try - time for it to return to the "watch list" after a longish period in the doldrums? It is heading for resistance, and it's also a good example of a chart where you can see how the 45 DMA seems to be the most useful choice as a "trade manager". Then we'll see that Southern Cross Healthcare has now broken resistance, again after a longish period of going nowhere fast, and finally we'll examine a "rising wedge" formation on the German DAX index. (You'll see the same thing in one of tonight's video clips - and yes, you can see it on the CAC40 video too although I don't discuss it there - and indeed you can observe it on several other major indices at the moment.)

OK - that's all for now - time to head off now for tonight's "end of ski season" bash so possibly mentoring replies will be delayed till tomorrow afternoon.......

All the best

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'.