It is just the right time of year to be here. Sunny weather, too early for the holiday rush and the flowers are a burst of colour everywhere. My youngest grand-daughter had her seventh birthday this week (groan!) so it was jelly and ice-cream and twenty hyperactive kids at the party all of whom decided "grandad's knee" was the best to bounce on. Spent an hour trying to get to grips with Gameboy (but left it to the youngsters in the end) and persuading the birthday girl in question that it was "cool" to wear a crash-hat when she rode her new bike. Now, what else happened this week? Oh yes, I got my first parking ticket of the year! And an overnight power-cut screwed up my system for Friday morning. Yippee!

Monday's trading was complicated by the changes to the weighting of LSE stocks designed to reflect more accurately the liquidity of shares. Hedge funds added to the downward pressures by selling affected companies short ahead of the changeover. The FTSE100 had a roller coaster day, ending on a low. Early trading on Tuesday was encouraging but the afternoon sesssion saw something of a rout amongst the top flight and the FTSE100 closed at 5680. Following the departure of front-man Justin Urquhart-Stewart, Barclays Stockbrokers suffered another blow when CEO, Jane Platt, also headed for pastures new. Apart from the obvious effect on Barclays, this did nothing to encourage the FTSE100 on Wednesday which took a dive towards the 5620 mark in the morning, only to be rescued by a late revival. The encouraging end to the previous day could not be maintained on Thursday and a sell-off in the final session took the main index back to the foothills, 58 points down at 5641. Friday was another jumpy day, although the FTSE100 managed to stay in positive territory despite Vodafone and Colt Telecom acting as sea anchors most of the day. It finished up 24 points at 5665 with the techMARK100 up 6 at 1807.

At ADVFN, all development effort appears to be being funnelled into the Streaming Products at the moment and by the latest view I have, it shouldn't be too long until it is up and running for real. Level 2 will take a bit of getting used to - but practice makes perfect! Looking good so far. As with all multi-platform software, the 80/20 rules applies, I guess. The difficulties of circumventing the Firewall and MAC problems are likely to have taken up as much time and effort as the rest of the system in toto. I have a feeling I might have to beef up my ageing computer to cope when it goes live - I always tend to have a lot of browser sessions running and I keep running out of memory. So, it will "bye bye ZX81" soon :)



The Weekly BB Review

Poor Lofty had been waiting in the PBB Dentist's waiting room since November last year before getting any attention in Dental Co. OSH Have you any info please? (Oasis Health Care) After much time in the doldrums, the shares began to rise sharply following results earlier this month which, although showing an increased loss, also showed a big increase in turnover and revealed ambitious expansion plans. They have recently made five new acquisitions increasing their portfolio of dental practices to 43 sites with 183 sugeries. Dr Doolittle picked up on these on Wednesday as the share increase coincided with a rumour of involvement in the vetinary field and mashman noticed a mention in last weekend's Sunday Times "Money" section. The vetinary link turned out to be a "red herring" but Dr D. came up with a good explanation of where the company are heading. The action was picked up on the FBB when the results were announced (Oasis Quality Healthcare) with astraleisure and -GoldDog- taking an active interest. By Friday the shares had marched on to 41p bid. What a pretty chart for June!

Interest in Domino Printing Sciences picked up this week with the publication of interim results, kindly posted by zzaxx99 (silent x ?) in 'Domino effect'. Despite progress with sales and profits, the shares took a bit of a thrashing, no doubt spurred on by the poor performances in the US and UK, which zzaxx99 highlighted and that worrying reduction in margin to only 1%. reetus was a bit perplexed that the fall was so acute but took solace from their later recovery, together with Artful Investor and Gerard J. The Week's Chart shows how the picture formed. Friday's close was 125p bid, up 2.5p on the day.

After a raft of rumours and shaken heads, trading in Orchard Furniture shares was suspended this week as astraleisure reported in Orchard Reverse Take Over rolaw1 and hilary were wondering just how long that piece-of-string called "suspension" might be. Earlier in Disappointment again, sorrera, the fowler and chipchap were not totally convinced there was anything in the story, although poolman's trade tracking suggested there was a lot of buying going on early in the week. The Telegraph had reported these deals were imminent two weeks ago - fancy them being ahead of the game! We don't see that too often. :)

Is Lavendon Group a complete dog or a chance for bottom fishing following its dramatic fall from grace this week? A trading statement containing phrases such as "...revenue growth has declined in Q2 to around 33% when compared to the same period last year...." rather suggests the former. In the Lavendon thread on the FBB, rogerpedley was trying to persuade us (and himself ?) that they were worth following. However, PUGUGLY and ripcurl were more of the opinion to stay well clear. (Almost exactly a year ago, resident TA expert, Limpsfield Chartist, was calling it safely by suggesting that a break through 330p would be encouraging but with the distinct possibility of a fall back through 300p with celticdavid even more optimistic.) I guess they will now all be re-drawing their lines to make the theory fit the new situation. By close of play today, the share price had clawed back little or nothing (Intraday Chart) - still a million miles from looking like a bargain. Down 46.5%.

Amstrad - looking very cheap ! brought some detailed thoughts from rally, although crocodile's opinion of their E-M@iler product was less than enthusiastic. Shares in Amstrad are looking decidedly weak at the moment - but they've been known to bounce back before. In Amstrad a buy ?, ErrollFlynn was sounding tempted while rb252 contemplated averaging down. I can't see anything in the chart to suggest support much above 50p. I think I would wait a while before plunging in.

Although the FBB has been extolling the virtues of Dyson Group for some time - see Dyson - fuel cell technology, emission reduction and more..... for instance - it wasn't until StewJames started No interest in Dyson on this board? on Friday lunchtime that the company got a mention on the PBB at all. Even he was begging "the tealeaf readers" to say something - anything. Meanwhile in the real world, following garth's introduction a couple of week's ago, netcurtains, JRB and peterreidsmith took up an interest and sinso gave us the full SP. PDT was impressed enough to add some to an ISA. Alchemy was one to take up the chase last week and diesel had obviously been watching from the sidelines for a while. NTV was hoping not to be too late for the party and Shares Magazine tipped them as a buy to add to the momentum this week. There was a little profit-taking on Friday but a look at the past month's chart shows what an opportunity it was. Friday's close? A creditable 167p bid. Good thread - full of information. Thanks garth for putting in so much effort!

I think when Lurker asked Are SCI a buy again? he was hoping for a more positive response. for gopher it was ramked as his worst buy of the year. SCI Entertainment Group have been on the slippery slope for a while now and Wednesday's news that Equitable Life had reduced their interest did nothing to help. The big crashes in price in January and February and the limp attempts at recovery which followed did nothing to instil any confidence. In seg moving??? on the FBB, feelings were mixed, with Grimbo and kermat at beginning the week looking for a rise in price but Early bird reiterating previous advice to stay clear. However, our arian-sounding friend, Vonbrokenburger, continued to be "positive". As btsuck quoted - "...Price 55p. Market cap 10million. Profits nill. Last figs 2.9 million pretax loss..." - where is the good news? Although exchanges became a bit heated at times, I didn't see any real argument for suggesting that SEG shares are likely to do anything much for a while. After a hint of change in wind direction on Thursday, the energy disappeared on Friday and the share price ended at 48p bid. Not worth looking at until the price breeches 100p and stays there a while - IMHO.

Just to give a small insight into the huge difference in volatility betwqeen the UK and UIS markets you need look no firther than techNet's famous * USA STOCKS - June 2001 * thread. Here talk is of "30 minute charts" and "10% swings several times a day every day". Sounds like hard work!

Although Internet passwords is notable for some amusing comments, there is also a serious message to take on board here. Passwords are only as secure as YOU make them. As NickLeeson reported, a large proportion of computer users look on them as a distraction rather thana security feature. I've made a note of Aquila's "******" because it looks very similar to my own and, although tim 3 was only joking (I hope!), there are still a lot of passwords sticking to screens on post-it notes, even in some of the more "responsible" corporate environments. (My years as an IT Consultant showed that often enough.) I tried dondee's idea "SUPERCALIFRAGILISTICEXPEALIDOCIOUS" but it was either too long for the system or I spelled it wrongly! DanB put a finger on one of the most insecure methods around - auto-password-generators. It is interesting to note that this conversation coincided with TechNet's report in URGENT!! - Credit Card Security breach which surfaced on Friday and is worth a read. Morg has some good advice - especially in using a "credit card" rather than a "debit card" for online transactions. That way you have some chance of recovering fraudulent purchases and you aren't going to lose any more than the available credit on the card. Which raises another point - why have a £10k or £20k credit limit on a card when you never spend (or need) anything like that amount? Tread carefully - it is a minefield out there.

The picture on The Rampometer (just for fun - not for investment advice!) has changed dramatically this week with the Tapolers dropping off the pace to 7th position when I last looked. Top of the tree were Mayborn Group and Redstone Telecom which is currently pinning its hopes on a placing of 2bn 1p shares to keep it afloat and over 40% down at 3p bid on Friday. I wonder who is stuck with a potting shed full of these? Not me! :)

Poster of the Week prize this week goes to garth for his extensive input to the Dyson - fuel cell technology, emission reduction and more..... thread. I'm sure all of the guys following Dyson Group were very grateful to you. Congratulations garth! Please drop me a line with a delivery address and I'll get your prize on its way. Now you are famous, how about including a few lines about yourself for the ADVFN Who's Who?

Quote of the Week Competition. Thank you for all of your contributions. Only one quotation received more than one vote this week and it is from the Internet passwords thread which inspired a couple of different entries. The winning "Quote of the Week" is Martini's retort No9 on the thread which was nominated by I Know Nothing and another who wishes to remain anonymous (but wasn't Martini, cos I checked!). It could have been someone who works at GCHQ :) To appreciate the appropriate nature of the "quote", you really need to read the thread as it only works in that context. If you will mail me a delivery address Martini, I will get your prize on its way to you. Well done!

I do hope you will continue to keep your eyes peeled for more gems during the week to come! When you find one, please send me a mail with Quote of the Week in the subject line, the nickname of the BBer responsible for the gem and the thread from which it comes. As usual the competition will close at 16:30 Friday.


Good Hunting!

The ADVFN Who's Who is still growing and is now a quite long list. If you haven't sent me your bio yet, please drop me a few lines about yourself - a full editing service is provided! No e-mail addresses are published unless specifically requested.