Hello again - it's always good to get back to what I somewhat arrogantly and inaccurately term 'work' - I greatly enjoy writing these WICS ramblings - and I certainly enjoy the nice comments I receive from many of you! It can hardly be much of a chore when it's so much fun.
Just before I forget to mention it, my current internet connection is a very slow dialup one that appears to be powered by steam, so for the next five weeks or so, it would be most helpful if you don't send me attachments when you're contacting me - if you want analysis of a particular chart you just need to tell me its name and your ideas concerning it - I can take things from there for you.

Anyway, moving along, what about the markets then?

I had thought that over the past couple of weeks we might have seen some kind of fairly definitive action regarding the overall direction of the major markets, but so far, things are still pretty indeterminate - a strong push back upwards, followed by another bout of overall weakness rather suggests to me a great deal of uncertainty and nervousness among participants. There's very little doubt in my mind that the next major move will be downwards (as I have so frequently banged on about of course) - I see nothing meantime to alter that opinion - but it would come as no great surprise if there's another strong upwards push first. It could well be that if the current Middle East contretemps fizzles out soon, markets will see that as a reason (excuse?) to turn strongly upwards - but don't be fooled because it will be a real suckers' rally!

No need to say very much about 'inflation' I guess - you'll have heard plenty about it recently for sure. The UK rate is highest among the 25 EU members and that's some achievement, given that inflation tends to affect poorer countries like Poland and so on pretty badly in the early stages of their membership.

I see too that a recent headline said "Heatwave Sends Power Prices Soaring!" Any excuse, eh?

Prince Hassan of Jordan (a highly respected oil analyst) reckons oil could be $200 a barrel within a couple of years - what will that do to Western inflation? I guess the Bank of England will be raising interest rates more than once over the rest of the year.

Ah well, back to the barrel of salt herring and the sack of oatmeal then.

A few more snippets I noticed recently - the 'average UK household' - whatever that might be - owns 2.4 tellies. And seemingly 'gadgets' will double household electronic power usage by 2010. Any comment thereon is probably superfluous although I could well be tempted.

Another headline was "Volatile Markets Sink Flotations", referring to the 'pulling' of several proposed stock market launches by smaller companies, due to the fact that their underwriters were getting jittery about being able to place enough of the stock. But nae problem to the hedge fund industry of course - CMA Global has brought forward plans to raise £275m from punters to waste (oops - invest) in a new hedge fund - the launch was to have been in the autumn but now it's tomorrow so you'll need to rush. Why bring it forward at such short notice? Maybe you can work that one out for yourself!

Turning to today's charts, we'll look first at our old friend French Connection again and no doubt you'll be able to see what is possibly developing there to the 'sell' side.

Next we'll examine J D Wetherspoon which potentially could be heading upwards.

Then, in the context of the 'really big picture' we'll examine the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) being the biggest of them all, just to put things into some kind of perspective. Please note though that to trade such an index needs very wide stop losses - after all, 100 points on the Dow represents less than one percent of it and it's not unusual to see bigger intra day moves than that on an index. If your pockets aren't yet deep enough to trade indices, please don't be tempted, because you'll only hold your stop losses way too tight - the inevitable effect of which will be a big losing stopout followed by a strong move in the direction you thought would be correct. And that kind of thing is very psychologically damaging - not to mention financially - believe me! (I'm not being patronising in saying that - it happened to me all too often in the past, before I 'wised up' to the idea of deleting the word 'greed' from my thought processes.)

That's it for this weekend then - please note that I'll be changing your access passwords very shortly, so if you requested WICS more than about four months or so ago you'll be receiving an email about this over the coming week - if you do want to continue to read this stuff, please wait for the email, which will give you details about how to subscribe. (Those of you still entitled to the foc 3 months' worth, and those who have already subscribed, will receive the new passwords in plenty of time of course.)

Oh yes, before I forget - my webmaster will be away next weekend so WICS won't be online till the evening of Monday 31st July.

With best wishes until the 31st then.

Ian.