As storm clouds rolled over financial markets on Tuesday the sun broke through for at least one entrepreneur who that day brought his specialist long-range weather forecasting company to the London Stock Market. With most market operators conducting damage limitation exercises Piers Corbyrn, managing director of Weather Action, became a paper multi-millionaire as the flotation of his company went down a storm. The price of the new shares bucked the sharply downward trend, opening at 79p and finishing the day at 90p, a healthy 11p premium. Weather Action, which has a customer base in both business and agricultural, takes its forecasts from studies of the links between solar activity and the development of weather patterns. This allows more accurate forecasting over the long term, although the system is useless in predicting equity depressions. Flotation will enable the company to expand its service to businesses such as clothing manufacturers and retailers who use climate forecasting as an aid in stock control.

Another forecaster grinning broadly through the week's adversity was the aptly named Fred Crooks, a South African investment pundit who less scientifically forecast last month that global stock markets were in for a battering in October. This harbinger of doom, who marries an obscure numbers formula, devised by a 13th century mathematician, with weather patterns and tidal movements, is forecasting more financial bloodletting with his unorthodox targeting tools pointing to further instability. Expect Weather Action to form a "synergetic" South African affiliate.