I hope I can write clearly what I want to say here; let me know if not.

We had another US government warning day before yesterday -July 11th - of imminent obl linked attacks, from cells the government says are operative within the US. This followed on from the day before's web site internet warning from allegedly one of obl's senior lieutenants. Now that is timing; 300 degrees from Sept 11.

Important to note however, the obl inspired statement prior to that came out on June 24 I believe, again from an obl lieutenant. More on this later, but this one did not fit obl's timing of the 11th and 26/27th of each month.

Once again, the US govt. warning comes right in the midst of when the President and Vice President are under intense pressure from corporate responsibility issues. (The previous US govt. warning came when both were under attack about how much they knew of intelligence warnings prior to the Sept 11, did it not ?) Anybody noticed a pattern here, or am I just being overly cynical. It's becoming a handy excuse for Mr President now n'est-ce pas? And straight after the warning given, another republican jumps up, as will be echoed and called for no doubt elsewhere from some US partners, just how bad the Iraqi dictator is (which is no doubt a reasonable statement) and that the US ought to invade immediately. Ahh the timing.

More to the point however, note the extreme volatility of US markets July 11, which is no coincidence, and something you will see continually, but only on related dates, now you are more aware of Gann. (I noted also the Dow was 200 points down at midday, when the market turned. Gann states in his commodity book somewhere I recall that the times of the day are also important for turns, midday being the most important, or more correctly actually, the sun half way between sunrise and sunset, believe it or not. Something I also hope to investigate later on.)

But back to the market, and timing, some comments follow;

(- a few comments on an ASL chart, point and figure.)

- refer to the QBE chart. You can see where a short sell was taken. On 18th June QBE makes an announcement that the recent drop in its share price is not warranted, and that the company will meet or better its earnings forecast for the year; up goes the price. 3 things I want to say about that.

1. The announcement purporting to be bullish, was in a downtrend. The day's top ends up being a lower top in the direction of the trend. I received a call from the broker at this point- happens only rarely - at the most serene time of 6am for me here, who relates to me the announcement, and I promptly panic out of my position, without first looking at my charts, which I now never to do. (I do sleep with the charts off these days.) The last time that happened, I swore to myself that I would immediately do the opposite of what the broker was suggesting, and when I hung up I knew immediately I should have shorted more - ah our psychology!

2. Here is a reason why shorting the market can be a little difficult; companies do all they can to support their share price (and also of course to improve it as you have seen via the accounting frauds now coming to light - all done to boost earnings and hence share prices, not to mention the CEO options packages.) We have the added problem in Australia of so many Australian mums and dads continually looking for cheap bargains, and buying stocks going lower, hence you may have noticed the trend on some stocks downwards can be a bit more erratic.

3. And here is the link to obl; things are not always what they seem. The announcement is released with the object of achieving a result. This will not be in line with the result you want or that is in your best interests. Ultimately the market players will make their collective judgement of the QBE announcement, which the chart will reveal; so trade the chart, not what the announcement says. And so it is with recent obl announcements, which are purporting to say that they have re grouped, that obl is alive and well. Can you see why I think this could be false. Like the QBE announcement, they are having to defend something, that if the trend was up, they would not have to do. I hope that makes sense to you. (The timing of these announcements are also important, that if one could study well enough would reveal a lot more about future events, as you see in some charts.) When things are going well, you don't have to come out with statements to say so; the obvious chart trend tells the story for you. But when your statements take on the defensive tone, there is an attachment there to something, that is being hidden.

If obl's group was really operative, they would have struck again heavily by now, and if they were really as undamaged as their releases say they are, they would not need to put out their releases. I could be wrong.

Anyway, that's what I try to remember about announcements, and relate it to what I see in the charts. I learnt this clearly with the Gann study work done by a fellow subscriber and trading of the US stock Priceline some years back, which some of you would have seen discussed in class.

Perhaps a final thing I could point out, remember also that governments do everything possible to support asset values, especially land price. Politicians become only too aware that disquiet in markets can very quickly turn to disquiet in voter patterns. Note however that there is never the same disquiet when markets reach insane values to the high side, which is actually far more dangerous. (Allows presidents to get away with things that would never be tolerated in a bear market !)

ps
There are some really odd things coming to light now about 9/11 that I am linking from lots of different sources; for example; remember the golfer Payne Stewart's plane that drifted aimlessly in the US skies on autopilot after the plane apparently lost pressurization or something like that and all on board suffocated or passed out, remember too that the US scrambled fighter jets to the side of this stricken plane, which I seem to remember was within 90 seconds of the plane not responding to air traffic control instructions. Yet on Sept 11 as I recall, no fighter jets could be found to do the same, yet they had much longer than 90 seconds to scramble.

QBE - PDF
ASL - PDF