#Brent #DAX Just because you can, never means you should! This trite saying bit back at the weekend, as usual thanks to our unwanted cats. One of the animals decided enjoying a fancy collar which opened a cat flap wasn’t worth the effort. Instead, it started peeing in the kitchen since the start of the year, causing an ongoing battle which employs a variety of scents cats allegedly hate. Needless to say, not a single one of the proprietary fixes worked.
With the first rain of the year spoiling a weekend in the mountains, an idea developed to dissuade the leaking cat – one which would be humane and not involved electric shocks nor shotgun cartridges. Instead, it was a simple fix using materials already available. For long forgotten reasons, we’d a drawer holding several motion activated LED lights. The lamps, roughly the side of a beermat, were designed to velcro onto a surface. Unfortunately, my invention employed a belt and braces approach due to a suspicion the cat wouldn’t be distracted by a light alone.
A couple of novelty Xmas cards from grandchildren provided the second part of the anti-cat device. It was the work of minutes (okay, most of Saturday) to remove the guts from the cards, running a few wires from the light sensors to the exposed Xmas card audio electronics. It was an immediate success, the sound of the cat flap slamming followed the horrible tones of “Jingle Bells” from beneath the kitchen table, the wooden floor brightly illuminated and dry.
For safety sake, another lamp was installed in a cat friendly gap in the kitchen, just in case.
The early hours of Sunday morning brought a symphony of “Jingle Bells” & “Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer”, the LED lamps and speakers being triggered repeatedly. Eventually irritated sufficiently to investigate, the cats were sound asleep but our Golden Retriever was having a great time, discovering she only needed to swipe her paw or tail to set the cat alarms off.
Hopefully, with my audio wiring now snipped, we can enjoy a nights sleep.
“Just because you can, never means you should! “ is a sentiment which Virgin Money must often feel defines their rebranding from Cydesdale & Yorkshire Bank to Virgin Money. From a share price perspective, things failed to go well over the last few years, the value remaining similarly becalmed as the big three retail banks. Thankfully, in the case of Virgin Money, the share doesn’t need a huge amount of work to propel itself free of the horrible Covid-19 drop to 46p in March. Despite the price trebling since the 46p low, we can now identify a trigger level at 164p, above which Virgin Money should commence some proper longer term recovery.
Above 164p calculates with an immediate potential of 186p, challenging the pre-pandemic high. With closure above this level, life becomes substantially more interesting as we can argue in favour of 260p as a longer term secondary target. Above such a point, we shall need revisit the tea leaves as life should become fun again.
For trouble to rear its head, the share needs below 70p as “bottom” is now at 20p.
The Amazing DAX (Dbi:DAX) The chart below shouldn’t really need a commentary but we’ll give it anyway. The German stock market has joined the USA, trading at All Time Highs and leaving the UK primary index looking weak. To be fair, even the UK AIM market is now visually outperforming the FTSE, trading at levels last seen in 2007. The burning question, obviously, is will the FTSE suddenly surge to catchup with better performing markets? Or is the UK paying the price of a history of incompetent political leadership?
We can make an argument which favours the DAX heading to 16,000 points as the next major point of interest. Whereas if the same criteria were applied to the UK FTSE, we currently struggle to calculate an upper ambition above 8,000 points.
FUTURES
| Time Issued | Market | Price At Issue | Short Entry | Fast Exit | Slow Exit | Stop | Long Entry | Fast Exit | Slow Exit | Stop | Prior |
| 9:51:38PM | BRENT | 56.27 | 54.38 | 53.645 | 52.77 | 55.63 | 56.27 | 57.81 | 60.25 | 53 | Success |
| 10:00:28PM | GOLD | 1849.28 | Success | ||||||||
| 5:08:53PM | FTSE | 6901.35 | |||||||||
| 5:10:25PM | FRANCE | 5722 | Success | ||||||||
| 5:25:55PM | GERMANY | 14102 | 13970 | 13915.5 | 13843 | 14082 | 14133 | 14440 | 16002 | 13560 | Success |
| 5:28:03PM | US500 | 3829 | ‘cess | ||||||||
| 5:30:08PM | DOW | 31132 | Shambles | ||||||||
| 5:31:36PM | NASDAQ | 13135 | Success | ||||||||
| 5:35:50PM | JAPAN | 28365 | Success |
