Artist and prize-winning potter, Grayson Perry, has been busy during the lock-down. A social butterfly by nature, oft-spotted at Royal Academy parties sporting a little girl Alice in Wonderland look, last night he and his wife hosted an hour-long TV programme on Channel 4 encouraging us to take up portrait painting and drawing. Yes, really, and comedian Joe Lycett (briefly called Hugo Boss) quickly produced a very convincing one of the UK’s Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty.

Published on the 10th April 2020 in the Financial Times newspaper, this wasn’t the first time Mr Coates had contributed an article. Acting on a hunch he had had when running a trading desk for Deutsche Bank, he then retrained in neuroscience and physiology at Cambridge University. He wanted to find out whether ‘the rollercoaster of physical sensations a person experiences while immersed in the markets alters their risk-taking’.

As a handful of countries start lifting corona-virus related restrictions, Britain looks set to enter another 3 weeks of lockdown. Tuesday the 14th April was the second STA Monthly Meeting that was held online due to limits to the size of indoor gatherings. Our guest speaker, Sankar Sharma, was obviously delighted to be invited, saying he was proud to be ‘among the best in the world of technical analysis’.

Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar came to a sticky end on the 15th of March, lending the phrase negative connotations ever since. In fact, an Ide is a very ancient word for certain dates in the calendar, the first full moon of the month (March, in this case). Tonight, the 7th April, we have another full moon, a pink super bright one as the moon’s elliptical orbit around the earth brings it closer to us than usual. It actually looks orange, and the ‘pink’ comes from the phlox that flowers at this time of year.

I’m a regular presence at Tuesday’s monthly meetings of the Society of Technical Analysts at the Institute of Chartered Accountants of England and Wales’ lovely premises at One Moorgate Place, City of London. Partly because I so enjoy catching up with members over drinks after the talk, but also because I’m tasked with doing a write-up and blog for those who didn’t make it. The meeting on the 11th March was cancelled – such a pity.