Hello again on this gloriously sunny day here in the mountains - I hope you weren't caught up in any of the Heathrow fog - related travel hassles. What a pain that must have been - and what a disappointment too, for many who simply had to abandon their holiday plans. I won't even suggest I "know how they feel" - because I don't. The current lack of snow here is just a little on the unimportant side in the greater scheme of things, and I feel extremely privileged to be able to go for a long walk up through the pine forest with its trees all encrusted in frost and glittering in the sunshine. My skiing obsession will be satisfied in due course, that's for sure. Then I'll whinge about having to clear the driveway and take the dog for a walk in thigh deep snow - you just can't get decent servants these days.

Anyway, I just thought I would write this wee extra WICS to remind everyone (including myself) that probably the greatest attribute of the successful financial trader is the self - reliance that comes from being prepared to take a relaxed attitude to events outwith our control. Maybe that's one of these 'secrets' that I mention in the manual - everything of true significance in the trading environment is hidden in plain sight. As individuals, we can't alter market conditions, and we certainly can't force a trade to win. Not even politicians, despite their universal crookedness, can influence Mr Market to any real extent. No matter how hard I try, I can't make it snow for all those whose one skiing week of the season, is currently proving somewhat less than satisfying. There are a lot of bad - tempered people down in the village this morning - according to my wife when she arrived back with today's fresh bread - mostly Brits who doubtless had to endure travel delays before getting here in the first place. I'm not trying to moralise because believe me, I too can play Mr Grumpy - in fact I probably could win an Oscar for the role, but what I DO want to suggest is that when you're trading, the more impatient/annoyed/adversarial you feel, the worse your results become. That's pretty much a constant within this environment.

Now don't get me wrong - IW has no wish to appear to be a little Zen Kung Fu Grasshopper - it would ruin my image as a professional cynic - but in a kind of a response to the many who email me seeking the Holy Grail of trading and who believe they can find it by searching absolutely everywhere, let me suggest a few places where you'll NEVER find it (if indeed it exists at all...."more below", he said mysteriously......): you WON'T find it from TTEW/WICS, books on trading, courses, seminars, spread bet providers, tipsters, the barman at the Distressed Duck, minicab drivers, fund managers, bankers, insurance salespeople, the Internet (Especially not the Internet!....forums, bulletin boards......aaghh.)

But these are the places where aspiring traders DO look, and can't you spend a whole lot of time, effort, energy, and money - oh yes, money - in the process! Was I any different during my own apprenticeship? "Yes" is the short answer - but only because neither the Internet nor courses/seminars existed back then. As to the rest, I guess I bought every available book on the Stock Market and on commodities trading. I subscribed to all sorts of magazines, such as Investors' Chronicle - I wonder if it still exists? I read all the share tips in the newspapers (and generally acted on them too - after all, somebody who writes for a newspaper MUST be on the inside track!) My goodness, I even had 'my' stockbroker from whom to seek advice - and my Mother's bank manager too. Gosh, the good old days before the FSA stuck its nose in, eh? Things were better back then, before these infernal newfangled ideas crept in.....cars and suchlike.

But then guess what happened? Yup - I found it - I found the Trading Holy Grail! Indiana Williams, with more than a little help from his old Dad, blundered through the fog for years and yet there it was, right out in the open, and staring at me in amazement that it had taken me so long (and cost so much) to discover.

Has IW finally lost his marbles? Is this the Armagnac talking? Not yet - that's for later this evening - after the champagne, the Montrachet, and the Grand Marnier....only kidding. No, if you recall from the TTEW manual, one of the quotes I used there, was a favourite expression of my Dad's..."The eyes of a fool are in the ends of the Earth."

And it's within that little gold nugget where you'll find YOUR trading Holy Grail. Now don't misunderstand the point of these Festive Season ramblings - I'm NOT for a moment saying that it's in any sense 'wrong' to seek trading knowledge and expertise from those who provide it. After all, everyone needs to start somewhere, and 'knowledge is power' in any environment. (Anyway, what would I do if nobody bought MY offerings? The poor wee dog would REALLY get fed up listening to me prattling on!) There are loads of good trading books on the go. (Well, at least a few.) Some succesful traders provide courses, seminars and the like. (Indeed, so do more than a few unsuccessful traders!) And if such facilities exist - and if you can afford them - why NOT use them? For sure, if you subscribe to those that suit your own style, and take from them what YOU feel to be of benefit, you'll more than likely shorten your own journey towards success, and save yourself a fortune in the process.

But you WON'T find that elusive Trading Holy Grail therein! You'll find THAT when you develop "inner strength/self reliance/confidence/ability to take ownership of your own decisions/call it what you will". Mark Douglas puts it a whole lot better than I can, in his excellent book The Disciplined Trader - well worth a Yuletide read. In a nutshell, the more relaxed you become about trading, the less you feel you 'need' to have trades running, the less adversarial you can become, and the more detached you can feel, the closer you will be to overall trading success. Become the "Interested and Amused Observer" to quote Bill Bonner and Addison Wiggin (from their book: Financial Reckoning Day.) Oh yes, and I DO consider myself still to be an apprentice trader- the day somebody claims to 'know it all', run a mile from them.

Now all the foregoing is just a bit of a summary of emails I have sent over the past year, in reply to the many 'psychological' type questions I receive. Modesty isn't generally one of my strong suits but honestly, I don't consider myself all that well qualified to get into real depth about 'how to think' - all I can do is put forward some ideas that have worked for me, but I don't even much care for all this 'I' and 'me' stuff - it's YOU that matters!

Enough already - what about 2007 then?

Easy enough really to predict - markets will either go up, down, or sideways. Bet you I'm right!

Seriously though, we can't know what's going to happen, but my own prediction is that the USA will lead the rest of the world into recession. The American indices (Dow Jones, S&P and Nasdaq to name the best - known) will begin to turn down early in the New Year - maybe even as early as next week - and will be followed a few months later by those in Europe, including the UK. All the signs are there and I won't bore you with them again - except to remind everyone that back in the late eighties, "greed was good" and City bonuses were deemed by the media to be 'obscene'. Have you heard that comment somewhere recently again? And here's a paraphrased snippet from one of my favourite car magazines: "The sale of Otis Chandler's collection of cars, bikes and automobilia grossed £19.3m, breaking all previous records. The previous £11.2m best was set by Sotheby's at the tail end of the last boom in 1990." Hmmm......did I ever suggest anywhere that history has a tendency to repeat itself?....

No charts this weekend - the purpose of this offering has just been intended to provoke some thought over the holiday.

On that note, may I wish you and yours a very peaceful and relaxing Festive Season, and here's to a seriously profitable 2007!

The next WICS will be on Sunday 7th January.

With every best wish,

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'.