Hello again, and first of all this weekend, a big public 'Thank You' to last weekend's workshop attendees who made my final effort so enjoyable!

Today we'll have a look at a couple of charts we examined at the workshop, and which coincidentally have been the subject of one or two recent mentoring emails.

But first, some more bits and pieces culled from the media, and mentioned here also in response to mentoring emails, this time more to do with the 'get your head straight' stuff of the last two issues of WICS - there are clearly quite a few masochists among you if you are requesting more of that!

What's Williams rabbiting on about now? - You may well ask.

Well, in my usual Ronnie Corbett fashion, I promise I'll get to the point eventually, but to do so, let's examine one or two different items culled from various recent publications. You may or may not immediately see the thread that connects them all, and you may or may not immediately appreciate their relevance to your success or otherwise as a trader, but I promise I'll get round to spelling that out in due course!

First off then, was the FT weekend magazine of a fortnight ago. It was deserving (as usual) of little more than a quick flick through, to marvel at its pretentiousness and to glance at the unbelievably expensive tat promoted by its advertisers. However, my eye was caught by an article about the use of mobile phones, the content of which helped me realise just how utterly dependent many (most?) people seem nowadays to be, on these devices.
"Hi Darling - it's me - I'm on the train." Aaarghh.

It seems to me that people simply CANNOT switch these things off, constantly checking their voicemail or whatever you call it, texting each other, phoning someone (anyone!) just to hear their own voice.
Why? (And I really do mean 'WHY?')

I think it's a symptom of 'needing to be doing something all the time' - ie some kind of 'fear of inactivity', coupled with 'fear of missing out on something'. Whatever that 'something' might be.

Could you translate that kind of syndrome into the trading environment?

(Just so you know, I too have a mobile phone. I carry it in the car, and I also usually take it with me when I'm fishing/trekking/skiing and so on.
Why? To keep in touch with markets and manage my trades? Well, here's a clue: I don't carry it switched on, nor indeed can I remember my own number.
And I promise you I'm not just making that up for the sake of this wee story.)

The next part of my story, is contained within that bastion of good taste that takes pride of place on many a coffee table: Exchange and Mart.
You'll probably have gathered from the manual that I'm a bit of a car enthusiast, and occasionally (when they're desperate for circulation and drop the price from 80p to 40p) I pick up a copy when I'm in the UK.
Looking in this week's edition, I'm sorely tempted......to buy another car? No, to laugh hysterically.

What do you reckon to this? "Buy your next used car from Honest Paul Polyfilla Motors and have your Christmas paid for!"
Apparently you get 'up to' £500 cashback if you buy a car. Oh yes, AND a 'free mountain bike' - not a great sign of confidence in the reliability of their stock, then.

Now I'm only a simple country boy, so correct me if I'm wrong here, but how can spending £thousands on a car, help you to pay for Christmas?
But people fall for that kind of advertising, and what does that say about their analytical abilities? How would they perform as traders?

Finally, as regards my media - related ramblings, there was a wee drop of snow in the West Country yesterday. Naturally, being England, everything ground to a halt. My wife was chortling as she watched the news so I joined her to see what had amused her (see - 'fear of missing out' afflicts me too.)

Anyway, it seems that 'the weather' is someone's fault and 'THEY' should have known about it and 'done something about it'. Of particular amusement to us were the two ladies who had seemingly gone into a shop in sunshine, and an hour later when they came out, it was snowing heavily, the pavements had become slippery, and SOMEONE was to blame. The fact that the whole deal had been very accurately forecast for days ahead, and that even if it hadn't been, tough luck, had rather escaped them. (How can anyone spend a whole hour in just one shop anyway?)

And that part of my wee story is to demonstrate 'blaming others for your own inadequacies.' I'm sure you could think of a zillion other examples of the same thing. For instance, superstitions are a great example of handing responsibility for failure to 'something external'. (My mother, bless her, always amused us in later life. Regularly she would remark "You know, we're not a lucky family" while reminding my wife to buy her a lottery ticket.)

So pulling the above comments together, what I'm suggesting is that very few people are willing to take full responsibility for their own situation. In fact, I rather think a lot of people refuse to take ANY responsibility at all.

Most of us try incredibly hard to hand over liability for our inadequacies, to someone else - the elusive 'THEY' as in 'They should do something about...blah blah.'
And as in the 'mobile phone' bit above, most of us are very insecure - that part is more understandable of course, because modern life almost hardwires us to be insecure - but as with everything else, practice can be beneficial, and perhaps we need to try practising being less insecure. (Here of course I'm specifically referring to the trading arena because without wishing to sound callous, I have no interest whatever in assisting anyone with anything else.)

Summing up then, think about your approach to trading, taking into account my comments above, and try really, really hard to get rid of subjectivity. (And for goodness' sake, dump ALL superstitions right now!)

That's now three issues of WICS where I have gone on about stuff I swore I would never cover. If it proves helpful, jolly good. If it has offended some of you, tough.

There's a book, in fact, that has absolutely NOTHING to do with financial trading......yet everything....he said mysteriously. And no, I am not getting paid anything for telling you to buy it and read it carefully. That's right - TELLING you to buy it. As far as I'm concerned, having been sent a copy of it recently, it's 'required reading' for would - be traders.
You might well find much of it offensive, and if so, as I remarked above, tough.
If all you ever read are pages 10 to 12, and 124 to 126, you will benefit, even if all you do is reflect on what has been said.

Its title is 'The Money Making Magic of a Funfair Goldfish' and its author is my own publisher, John Harrison. You can buy a copy from Streetwise Publications, Eden House, Genesis Park, Rotherham S60 1DX, telephone 01709 820033. Buy it!

Moving on to today's charts (phew - thank goodness!) we'll have another look at 'triangle' formations. As I mentioned above, both these charts have been the subject of a few emails over the past couple of weeks, and were also examined at the workshop. Hopefully they will help in your understanding of the potential use of triangles in identifying trading opportunities.

On a vastly more interesting topic (only joking - I love banging on in WICS) there's 'proper snow' I hear, at our winter home, and the ski lifts are planned to open on 3rd December (an earlier than usual start to the season), so I'll fairly shortly be heading off to enjoy my favourite pastime - sitting on a sunny mountain restaurant terrace with a seriously decent cup of coffee while watching all the snow bunnies sliding around having fun. So don't expect immediate responses to mentoring emails for a while! Poseur? Moi?

Till next weekend then, 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'.