It was a week tinged with sadness here as one of the regulars at my newly adopted local was knocked from his bicycle and killed by a hit-and-runner on Tuesday night. A nice friendly guy with a good word for everyone and a leading light in the disabled anglers' club which meets at the pub regularly. It was made more personal as I was probably among the last to see him alive, waving goodnight as he passed me on his way home (about 9.30pm and relatively sober, I must add!). However, life goes on, as they say..... Cable is coming to our little town and bringing with it the inevitable traffic jams as trenches spring up all over the place and disfunctioning temporary traffic lights conspire to confuse. It also appears to coincide with the recent bout of power cuts we have suffered as, presumably, the prehistoric-looking digging contraptions in use screw through power cables which they didn't know were there. Who on Earth plans these jobs? It can't be the local authority because they, apparently, never plan anything! :=)

It was a good start to the week as the FTSE100 edged towards 6000, led by bargain hunting amongst the telecoms and technology stocks. The bullish stance continued on Tuesday with the FTSE100 again gaining and topping the 6000 mark thanks in part to a recovery in Vodafone. It was only the financial sector which held the market back, but an 80 ppoint gain was still good to see. With everyone awaiting the budget, trading on Wednesday was thin and the main index fell off a tad, with the FTSE100 ending the session at 6001. The budget had little or no effect on the market - another damp squib. With interest rates held at current levels on Thursday, the market saw no reason for excitement, although there were small signs of life in the telecoms sector. With the US overnight producing a substantial rise in the DJIA and a disappointing (but predicted) fall in the NASDAQ, Friday trading took its lead from that mixed bag and the day began with a lot of red arrows and stayed that way throughout. The FTSE100 gave up the 6000 without a whimpr.

The ADVFN Top Lists feature has always been a favourite of mine and way ahead of anything any of the competitors produced. Well, good news - the best just got better! A new and configurable Breakouts option has now been added together with FTSE100 and techMARK100 grids for an instant view of each. This is a really great bunch of analyses which is worth regular visits throughout the day.



The Weekly BB Review

Rumours were rife this week that something was going on with Telewest as their recent recovery continued - Thursday saw them among the highest gainers. In fact the performance has been unpredictable (but generally positive) since janinoosh began telewest - some undercurrents? a month or so ago. After another look at the chart, Aquila thought it was too good a buy signal to miss. DavB was being mysterious (as opposed to strange ;=)) and dodddy had followed the sentiment by going long on the stock. moet considered his long wait about to be rewarded. Then Aquila burst into song and I had to leave! With results due in two weeks time, there will be even more unpredicted movements, no doubt, but it has been a good week for the company, despite the small dip on Friday which appeared to be more a reaction to the bad vibes coming out of the US overnight than anything.

British Biotech (BBG) took a turn for the better this week as it announced patient recruitment into phase II trials of E21R in leukaemia. The drug may also be effective in treatment of rheumatoid arthritis and, if successfully brought to market would have a huge potential for sales - as well as providing safer and more effective treatment for patients. Rayrac was clearly impressed, although none but MegRyan joined the new thread - and the motives for that were not entirely investment related! The huge peak in transaction volumes on Thursday (mostly covered by a single 10 million share deal) does suggest something is afoot. Friday saw the price level out at 25.25p bid but no sign of the weakness which some other biotechs were suffering.

It was a tolerably good week for Games Workshop (GAW) as the latest support level appeared to stick and the share price moved on to greater heights to the delight of chester. Scripophilist picked up on a big cross trade on Thursday which he translated as a search for stock amongst the MMs. (There are slightly more voluble opinions on the Free BB - see War what is it good for?Absolutely... - where the potential was recognised a long time ago.) The share price pulled back a little on Friday, caught up in the general melee, but still ended the week in safe territory. If the market for the offering coming out of their joint venture with Climax is a fraction of what their PR suggests, then Warhammer could become even more of a money-spinner. Well worth keeping an eye on.

Bookham Technology has shown no appetite for a fight of late as the TA graphs in Bookham......a look at the chart clearly demonstrate. (Thanks to bird and robber for those.) Skinny spotted the company's announcement of a reduction in workforce on Thursday (15%) but adriand cast doubt on whether that would be enough. They are now so far from the heady days of last year that I can't see a way back. As for where the bottom is, potentially a big zero! I'll leave this one to the shorters for a while, I think. Target 100p ?

Following an item in last weekend's Telegraph, the big news of the week for many appeared in ADVFN and IG Group Agreement which announced a two-way deal which promises direct access to IG Index from ADVFN and the supply of Level 2 data to the spread betting firm. "The deal will be revenue enhancing for ADVFN." was the term everyone wanted to hear. The devil is in the detail, so they say, but there was not a lot of detail here to clutch at. If, as Bullshare said, the newspaper story took them by surprise, then I guess it could mean that details are still being thrashed out. However, the news had an immediate uplifting effect on the share price, some of which has since been surrendered to profit-taking. But there appears to be support at 6p bid which, although not a major milestone, is certainly encouraging for all the BBers who have put their money where their BB is! And now for the next trick.....

Can private investors beat the professionals? - cfrsqc's attempt to persuade us to do his research for him, provoked only a few responses - probably more than it deserved. As the general opinion on the BB is that institutional investors are more like automatons than real investors, it was no surprise to see that the overwhelming sentiment was "Yes, of course!" cheve recalled the pinsticking theory (didn't they do that using a chimp once?) which purports to outperform the big boys. Scripophilist is in no doubt about the answer and with his propensity for research, I know he will have all the facts and figures somewhere to hand to prove the point. Like me, he thought Risker was more on the ball with the alternative question "Can professionals underperform private investors?". The Count seemed undecided ;=) but Martini more interested in just how often it happens and why. While Tinker says, quite rightly, that that is why we are all here. If we had enough faith in institutional investors to look after our investments we would hardly be putting in the effort we do here to make a buck. So cfrsqc, as ExecLine says - come clean on who you are and who you represent and you might get some more reasoned responses. Until then, put me down as a "don't know" like The Count.

In January, Forsaken came up with Lesson1 in what, presumably, will be a multi-volume collectable of "dos" and "don'ts" - aimed at the less-experienced investor. (Perhaps of interest to NEWBIES) It really turned out to be a bit of PR for Technical Analysis (as though that were needed on this BB!). The highlight of the responses was probably DanB's invention of "menstrual" stocks. Lesson2 is now with us and covers "averaging down" which even dedicated TAers will admit is taboo. But then, there is always that "special" reason for doing it in "your" case.....is there not? Averaging down generally involves sentiment which has been the undoing of many a potentially successful investor. It is a mug's game - but we have all done it (including your's truly). I look forward to Lesson3 which promises to be on "stop losses" - a much more practical and sensible subject. Meanwhile, back to my chicken bones and casting the runes.....

The facility (accessed via the Trades tab) has been further enhanced to provide yet more detail, flexibility and speed. If, like me, you find it useful to have a streaming trades facility constantly available for some of your holdings, this is a great way to achieve that, leaving other browser sessions free for the Bulletin Boards, News, etc., The overhead is minimal and the response extremely good. If you haven't tried it lately, take a look. A precis of the new functionality appears in Exact Futures - New Features.

There are some fine regular feature threads always running on the Bulletin Board which are well worth having a look at if they are relevant to your trading. * USA STOCKS - March 2001 *, * ASIA STOCKS - Year 2001 * and * EURO STOCKS - Year 2001 * all begin with dynamic charts for an instant view of the particular markets (thanks to TechNet) and some good discussion. If you are interested in the pharma area, Sectoral Intercourse: Pharmaceuticals contains just about every snippet of information relevant to the sector, virtually as it happens, thanks to zzaxx99.

Meanwhile, in the Land of the Free.......

Cut-price retailer, TJ Hughes hit the headlines for all the wrong reasons this week as Accounting bungle wipes off 30% relates. davewuzz was hoping it was an over-reaction in the market (not unheard of!) pingers and overline seemed to support that premise. The question of why volumes were so low despite the bad news and price fall was, in part at least, answered by freelander who pointed out that a lot of the small shareholders were employees. These will either hold on or be locked in. Muscat sounded a lot more cautious about the chances of short-term recovery, whilst energyi was generally unimpressed with the company's performance - even before the fall - "If the inventory restatement is a warning of more bad news to come, then these shares could easily slide lower". My sentiments exactly. On the Premium BB, Biffer was still convinced there is an opportunity there (when the bottom is reached!) but PUGUGLY was adamantly not. I think everyone will be wise to wait and see what happens in the run up to results on April 9th. Friday's close of 195p bid was hardly encouraging.

In Forbidden Tech the Final Straw (FBT), goodfella reckons the company's online demo so poor that there is no hope for them - in truth it was The Standard which carried the story in February, headlined "Forbidden fruit is a rotten tomato." However, if any company demo is reported to be "underwhelming" and "ropey", then it is hardly good news. After an initial surge in price, the shares have now returned to their downward spiral. The Quack, cheve, Rew1 were all firmly on the shorting bandwagon (to good reason) with viren seemingly putting the final nail in the coffin, at the same time offering some sound advice - "Dont fall in love with concepts or shares especially in current climates." Dave5182 leapt to the defence with a well-structured argument in favour of the company and its product(s) which is difficult to refute but TangoTango and Rew1 remained unconvinced. With the share price down nearly 15% on Friday and no support level in sight much above 50p, I think sitting on the sidelines is the best strategy here - unless you already have a good short position sorted out, of course!

Enterprise Oil (ETP) announced results on Thursday, with figures well ahead of expectations, although with a suggestion that bottle necks in their production systems may see capacity decline. BuyLowSellHigh saw enough good news there to persuade him to buy, although shemshersingh focused more on the rumurs doing the rounds that Shell might be interested in the company. initrader posted a precis report with a warning that the company no longer looks cheap. As the price drifted away on Friday (this is not unusual the day after results are published no matter how good the news) hodginsjkp and The Quack were eyeing it up as a shorting chance but shemshersingh at least was sitting tight. Friday's intraday chart showed some fair sized buys in the afternoon but not enough to stop the price from falling 6% (37p). With OPEC soon to meet to discuss output restrictions and protect prices, this story may have longer to run.

I would like to award this week's Poster of the Week prize to Dave5182 from the Free BB for his passionate but structured arguments in Forbidden Tech the Final Straw. Whilst I can't say I entirely agree with the sentiments expressed, I recognise the controlled passion in the responses and the measured argument. Something we always need more of. Congratulations Dave! Please drop me a line with a delivery address and I'll get your prize on its way.


Good Hunting!

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