cso1- What is your view now?, page-2

Debono, it's hard to write about a stock and trade it, as you seemed to indicate in your recent comment to me when I bemoaned the absence of responses to my posts for the last week about NCP, while most people were consumed with picking fights with each other and other religions etc - a sign of the times and often a sign of a bottom. Anyway, that's life.

Unfortunately perhaps, my strength if anything, is picking bottoms. Trend following is hard for me and I've never been much good at picking tops and usually get out too early. As previously mentioned, I sold on Friday (partly because things seemed to be getting crazy and the volatility was very high, NCPWOF being an example). It would appear that you were right to hang on as NWS outperformed the market last night.

NCP is the hardest blue chip stock for me to chart and as for Rivkin and many of the brokers and analysts, its movements have usually been a mystery and I've avoided it. However, the recent changes in business fortune, multiple (and slightly higher) lows, flattening of the simple MA 50 indicator, Presidential cycle, incredibly poor market sentiment etc encouraged me to take a call warrants punt, albeit a bit too early, as I had misread the extremely poor spread conditions at the time relating in part to the pull out of BNP.

As for shorting, it often pays to wait a bit longer than it does for calls, as Rembrandt recently indicated (correct me if I'm wrong). My guess is the market is going into a "breather" phase, as it did last November. The elections haven't been decided and Iraq etc hangs over our heads, not to mention that most of the investment community is eager this time to look for the next sign of another shorting opportunity.

Disclaimer: I don't own any NCP stock or derivatives at the moment and am not in any way qualified to advise.