Well, there has been so much of absolutely nothing going on all week that today I think we'll begin by talking about a few 'housekeeping' items, and then move on to a wee bit more on 'psychology' - one or two of you have requested a little more regarding my thoughts about what differentiates 'successful' from 'failing' traders, so I'll chat a little about that.
'Housekeeping' then - and the first thing to reiterate is that WICS is produced entirely with a view to helping your understanding of trading. I try hard to ensure it reflects the kind of questions you ask, and if perforce it seems complex to some of you, then please ASK for clarification! (no complication this weekend though - as promised last time, the charts below are 'simple'!)

Next, please be aware that my general financial/economic/quasi - political observations in WICS are exactly that - they are MY observations.

For goodness' sake don't hang on my every word! I write what I do because subscribers want me to (and I confess I find the resulting comments very enjoyable to deal with) but these are my opinions and you know what I say in the manual about opinions. Mine are no better nor worse than anyone else's and honestly, you won't make money from opinions - only from careful and considered analysis of what a chart or charts might be telling you. If there is now a spate of emails requesting me to cease my ramblings and use WICS solely for chart analysis, then that is precisely what I'll do - as mentioned above, it's produced for YOUR benefit (hopefully) - not for mine.

OK, the next point regarding 'housekeeping' - it appears that my old chum Hotmail is going through one of its periodic turryvees, and there have been several complaints that I have failed to reply to your emails. That is most emphatically not the case - either the email in question was not received by me in the first place, or my reply thereto was not received by you. Sometimes I receive the message as a 'bounceback' (or you do) but often it just seems to have vanished into cyberspace and obviously in that case neither you nor I can have any idea as to whether or not it was received/replied to. If you think you have been affected by this (and it can also apply to aol, yahoo, ntlworld and tesco.net users) then a solution might be to contact my webmaster, who has most kindly agreed to assist with the acquisition of a gmail (googlemail) account - that appears to totally resolve the matter. He can be contacted on colin@cjonesdesign.co.uk. (By the way, there's no false modesty involved when I confess to being more or less a 'computer illiterate' - I have had to teach myself a certain amount about their use - but I only know what is needed to do my job. In that context, the 'Windows for Dummies' series by Woody Leonhard is highly recommended - available from any High Street bookseller, and money very well spent. The 730 page 'Nine Books in One' version sits within easy reach of my left hand!)

Next, thanks to all who responded to the request for help with producing a WICS index - a lot more of you contacted me than I expected, to be honest, and things are moving along nicely regarding its production.

Lots of wee snippets during the week - it was amusing to read the French wine growers' response to EU proposals for grubbing up 400000 hectares of surplus vines : "We regret the incoherence of the proposals...." Some of the surplus production must have found its way into the Brussels meeting then.

Calls by the GMB for a strike at Asda - wouldn't be taking place to coincide with the next England game, by any chance?

Big profits at Bradford & Bingley, but big provision too for 'mis - selling'. Seems they expect to have to shell out another £70m after having already paid back about the same amount over the last couple of years. Funny how the 'compensation' never quite makes up for the customers' actual losses though, eh?

The other weekend I mentioned that 'share buybacks' never impressed me and that to me they're a sign of weakness. ITV anyone?

And doubtless those of you with brown lawns will be impressed by Thames Water's profits, not to mention the attendant price rises.

I see Scottish Power has used the current sporting distraction to bury the announcement of its third price rise in eight months - they surely must have retained Herr Blair's spin doctor as a media consultant.

Anyway, moving on to 'psychology' as mentioned at the start of this weekend's offering, what distinguishes 'successful' traders and sets them apart from all the failures? I have touched on this before of course, but I honestly believe that the single most important attribute of successful traders is that of being willing and able to take full responsibility for their actions, in every walk of life.

A sentence in very frequent use throughout my schooldays (and used a fair bit by myself too, make no mistake about that!) was "It wisnae me, Miss."

I'm sure I don't need to elaborate on the exact context, but sadly, it's an attitude that most people carry with them into and throughout their adult life -the 'culture of blame' that permeates our environment, particularly among the Anglo Saxons. Everything that goes wrong is someone else's fault, never one's own. I'm certain that the one big thing that separates 'good' from 'bad' traders is the ability to accept that a lot (most?) of what goes on in one's life is caused by one's own actions or lack thereof. I know I've mentioned it before - "taking personal responsibility" - and I have my own wee empirical test for when someone whinges on to me that "the world is against me - I'm not meant to succeed...." - it's the 'My Mum Test' - which originated with (you've guessed it) my Mum. Bless her, she was a strange mixture of huge intellect and superstition - she would never travel in a green car for example, and would always say 'hello' to a magpie....yet she spoke four languages fluently (five if you include Latin) and had a degree in physics......Anyway, one of her mantras was "We're not a lucky family" yet in almost the same breath she would ensure that my wife had remembered to buy her a lottery ticket. So where am I Ieading, in this Ronnie Corbett fashion? To the point of the 'My Mum Test' in fact! If you sometimes buy a lottery ticket and say "It's only a bit of fun" then maybe you have no real problem, although I have my suspicions for all that. If you regularly buy one or more tickets (or indeed subscribe) then I suspect you'll still claim it's "Only a bit of fun" but that you don't actually mean it. I think you might really be hoping for the 'big win'. If you actually watch the results programme on the telly, then in terms of trading success, to be brutally frank I don't think you have a hope of ever getting there. (Unless of course you have the courage to dump the lottery for good.) The chances of a big lottery win are three times less than those of being struck by lightning - everyone of course knows that, but the attitude seems to be "But if you don't do it, your chances are nil." Wise up folks - the chances are as near nil as makes no difference anyway! No, I reckon that the regular spending of hard - earned cash on something like the lottery, is a sign of 'not quite being there yet' as regards taking personal responsibility for trading success or failure. Harsh words? Doubtless one or two of you will believe so, but I won't be retracting the observation! (When I think about it, given that being struck by lightning is so much more probable than a lottery win, and given the 'blame culture' we live in - why not spend the lottery sub on a carbon fibre fishing rod and walk around holding it above your head in a thunderstorm on the poshest golf course you can find? If you survive a strike, I'll bet you could sue the committee for a fortune because I doubt if there would be any signs posted on a golf course to warn you about fishing rods and thunderstorms.) Uh - oh: perhaps I had better make the point that my suggestion above is a joke, and that it would in fact be a very, very bad idea, so please don't try it!

Anyway, the serious point is that if you tend to apportion blame but miss yourself from its distribution, then you will find trading a very difficult environment in which to survive, never mind prosper. If you're a 'wisher' or a 'hoper' (in the sense of hoping for the unattainable) you won't succeed as a trader. If on the other hand you can take positive steps to think, analyse objectively, and act on your thinking and analysis with self - confidence, you'll likely lose more than you win in the early stages because it's hard not to do so, but over time, you'll arrive at consistent trading success. You WILL do so - I did, and I am extremely 'ordinary', I promise! (But touch wood, I'm not in the least superstitious.) Remember too that in a sense, WICS is 'testing' you - the extent to which you hang on my views, or just file them for possible future reference, may help you analyse where you are on your own road to total self reliance. How pompous! - but how else can I express my meaning? (Often when writing WICS I think I have been too harsh in my comments and I delete the section in question, but the foregoing has been requested by many of you and despite the tongue in cheek way I tend to approach things, this time I'm going to leave it unaltered despite its potential to cause some offence.)

Onward then to the markets - where are they heading? Up, down, or sideways, just the same as always. Actually it seems to me that although the Yanks have been teetering on the brink and nearly lost their footing over the last few weeks, they may manage to remain at the top of the cliff for a while yet, in defiance of overall market forces - but with their housing market in very deep trouble I doubt very much if there's going to be a fresh mass of remortgage cash thrown at the stock market any time soon - we'll see.

European markets have very probably peaked and are about to tank, as already mentioned in several issues of WICS, of course.

But remember my comments above about 'relying on the opinions of others'!!

Charts this weekend, as promised, are pretty straightforward and probably need little explanation beyond their attendant notes - but to reiterate another of my comments above - WICS is written for YOU, and if you're unsure of anything, please ask me to clarify - you have paid for my help and I'm more than happy to provide the service.

Next weekend's WICS, by the way, will be the last till that of 23rd July. There will be email autoresponders running from 4th July till around the 20th, so between those dates please don't expect a personal response - I won't change any passwords till after the 23rd so if your sub is about to expire, don't concern yourself till after that date.

Anyway, all the best till next weekend - happy trading!

Ian.