4004 days ago
Our pals at Spreadbet Magazine on Friday published a new e-booklet by the legendary bear raider Evil Knievil and we had 250 copies to give away. We now have just 150 copies to go - it is first come first served while stocks last.
The publication comes with a brand new introduction by my good self. But we now have just 150 copies to give away on a first come first served basis – to get your copy CLICK HERE
4155 days ago
Life is too short. I am making it simpler and so I have handed in my notice with immediate effect at Spreadbet Magazine to focus on this site, The Nifty Fifty, Shareprophets, UKInvestor Show and RMPC, working only with a small trusted team.
For what it is worth my last column published today read:
For what it is worth my last column published today read:
4171 days ago
In the June edition of spreadbet magazine I penned a long pice on Cupid (CUP) the AIM Cesspit listed online dating website. You can download the publication for free by hitting the image below.
4173 days ago
The company is delighted to announce that it has issued shares to a) grow the business by acquisition b) to provide working capital to grow the business c) in response to institutional demand or d) all of the above. Very rarely does a company say that it is issuing shares because it is running out of cash. The reality is that this is all too often the reason. And some companies seem rather keener on issuing shares than others. The reason: management and shareholder misalignment.
Nigel Wray always bangs on about this and he is right. When you invest in a business you want the CEO and other key personnel to want exactly the same thing as you which is, if we cut to the chase, the share price to go up with a few dividends as a bonus.
Now it is very rare for a PLC director to have no skin in the game at all via shares. When that is the case you really have to ask why? However if you skim through the annual reports of all too many AIM companies you will see that the shareholding of the main men (and women, lest I be accused of sexism) is, in absolute terms, not great. And relative to their total compensation it can often be trivial.
4181 days ago
It was one of those days when the “white pages” of the newspapers led with a City story: the shock departure of Stephen Hester as CEO of RBS. Shares fell by 4% in early trading on the back of the news. From there, the story moved from the financial arena to the political one. Labour said that Chancellor George Osborne had cost taxpayers billions by pushing Hester out. Osborne said that Labour had cost the taxpayer even more billions by overpaying when it bailed RBS out in 2008. It was all usual schoolboy knockabout stuff.
But does it really matter who is at the helm of giant FTSE 100 companies? Clearly it can if the captain of the ship is someone like Hester’s predecessor Fred “the Shred” Goodwin. Fred drove a (with hindsight) reckless acquisition spree and created a culture where RBS simply took on too much risk. But RBS was unusual among FTSE 100 companies
4200 days ago
The June Edition of Spreadbet Magazine is now live and features Tom Winnifrith on the failed AIM system, Zak Mir, an interview with Lucian Miers and a cover feature on gold. You can download it for free by clicking here.
4203 days ago
You have just two days to make your nominations for the 2013 AIM Cesspit awards, an annual celebration of everything that is wrong about London’s junior market. So hurry, hurry, hurry. The point of these awards? Well there are a couple…
The first is that there are numerous awards where the “best” of AIM is celebrated. The market always wants to talk about its triumphs. The reality is that it tries not to discuss its failures and failings openly. It needs to. We all know that there are Nomads out there that will float any POS without, it appears, any regulatory sanction at all.
More importantly we all know that the vast majority of companies on AIM have delivered abject returns for investors. AIM constantly boasts about the amount of money it has raised for member companies. But, so much of that money has gone to greedy directors who do not deliver, parasitic advisors or simply to money heaven as it is pissed away on duff projects. AIM needs to be reminded of that. If nothing else this is a chance for investors to vent some of their justifiable anger.
I know that the editor of this esteemed website has served up a few nominations. Remind me Richard the CEO of which company beginning with N did you nominate for the third award (Editor interject - NEOS Resources and one Mr Stephen Rudofsky)? So join Richard Jennings in making your nominations now before the Friday deadline.
At an awards ceremony in late June, real trophies will be presented to those who have helped make AIM the Cesspit it is.
There are seven awards
4209 days ago
My friends at Spreadbet Magazine have just launched an entirely new bulletin board for the time pressed individuals amongst you. Uniquely, it consolidates other board’s feeds whilst allowing you to post your own comments (even against me) and also lets you see prevailing sentiment on a stock.
I have no financial interest in this Bulletin Board but whether you are a Bulletin Board moron or a serious poster you may wish to have a glance.
This new board can be found at www.bulletincentral.co.uk.
4215 days ago
Shares in AIM listed Quindell Portfolio have slumped to 7.12p following a disastrous results presentation. But that still values this strange stockmarket beastie at more than £400 million. Folks cannot say that they were not warned about this… On my new www.shareprophets.com website, myself, Lucian Miers and Evil Knievil (SBM editors ‘pal’!) all warned folks to get out well before the current debacle. Personally, I still see the shares as a strong sell – there are just too many red flags here.
Supporters will tell you that the stock now trades on a PE of 5 and that the recent slump from 13p is all down to wicked short sellers and scumbags like me spreading disinformation. Er…no. I list below the red flag issues which should tell you that this will end in tears for the bulls and obscenely excessive bacchanalian celebrations round at Real Man Pizza Company for the bears.
4225 days ago
I seem to remember that there used to be an AIM Australia Day party. The “cesspit” meets a bunch of folks from a country which started its colonial life as a penal colony. It sounds like a hoot. But I guess that I am not going to get invited if such an event still takes place. Or perhaps it never did and was just a figment of my imagination – a sort of party for white collar folk held in Jabba the Hut’s Bar. Did Princess Leia attend this party? Which PR firm does she work for as I’d like a briefing? And which dodgy mining stock is Jabba promoting today? We need to know.
I slightly digress, but I am a Star Wars groupie and Carrie Fisher is always welcome at Chez Winnifrith to pop on over and drone on yet again about her celeb parents and all that cocaine she took any time. Now,where was I? Oh yes, in that water and snake filled garbage crusher on the Death Star when Luke, Han, Chewie and Leia almost get crushed before R2D2 and C3PO save them by hacking into the control system. I refer of course to AIM.
It seems that barely a day goes by without me feeling compelled to vent my anger about some outrage inflicted on investors on the cesspit. But, it strikes me that a disproportionate number of the stocks that I write about in this vein, are dual listed on the ASX and are primarily Australian companies
4227 days ago
Calling the bottom of any market is always impossible. I leave that to cleverer, if illiterate, folk than me. i.e. chartists like my good pal Zak Mir. But it strikes me that those who regard now as an opportune time to get back into mining (and plausibly oil) stocks are getting ahead of themselves. Yes, the sectors have performed abjectly. But I sense that there is far worse to come.
The story starts a few years ago when gold was racing ahead, folks were convinced that China would consume 120% of every tonne of base metals produced and that it would do the same for oil. Extrapolating these macro trends into a super cycle allowed an awful lot of marginal project,s or even non-projects, and arguably just dreams, to gain a stock market listing and secure equity finance. In the four or five years that have followed a few things have changed.
Firstly, it has become abundantly clear to investors that management teams across the resources sectors live the life of riley, awarding themselves huge pay packages and jetting here there and everywhere at vast expense. Generally having a great old time.
Secondly, very few of these management teams have delivered anything in terms of value creation. There are actually more mining companies in the world than there are projects to work on
4239 days ago
I am tired. A hard day is behind me and now I work through the night preparing to bag a space on the Strand at daybreak to show my respect to the greatest leader that Britain has ever enjoyed. Part of my tiredness is down to launching a new website which I would urge you to check out at www.shareprophets.com, but part is also down to wrestling with an idea of how to attack the corruption at the heart of AIM. Perhaps you can assist? I think out loud.
I spent a good 45 minutes today chatting to a fellow who has tried to gain answers to what seem to me 100% legitimate questions about an AIM listed company. He has approached the company and was blocked. He approached the advisors. Blocked. He tried the police, his MP and the LSE AIM team and was again blocked. Finally, he wrote in public and has now been crushed with a PLC using shareholders cash to shut him up via the courts. But his questions are legitimate ones.
4251 days ago
Why do companies issue shares? Because they need cash. Why do they say they are issuing shares? Er….well it is never because they are running out of cash, of course! There are two standard excuses which you see in RNS after RNS and they just do not wash.
The first is that the company is issuing shares “in response to institutional demand.” The most laughable RNS in this vein in recent weeks in this vein came from K3 Business Technology (KBT). Its shares had halved in value and it was issuing shares “in response to institutional demand.” Pull the other one…
4261 days ago
The April edition of Spreadbet Magazine is now live and is a gold special. My own contribution is a feature on Highland Gold (HGM)
You can download the magazine for free by hitting the image below
4261 days ago
It is normally crackpot lefties who bleat on about the short termist approach of some businesses which undermines capitalism, and so I venture into an area where I might find myself in the same ideological bed as gold grade loons like Polly Toynbee. Whatever… The old trout has – like the proverbial broken clock – got to be right now and again. My mind wanders into this area thanks to two companies on AIM: CPP (which is perhaps days away from going down the plughole) and Cupid which is not near the plughole. Yet.
CPP provided financial services support for big companies. The problem was that some of the services it provided were not just crap they were an outright scam. It was hugely profitable for CPP but in the end you cannot go around ripping off your customers forever because they walk. As it happens it did not get to that stage with CPP because the FSA stepped in, shut down a large part of the operation and slapped a huge fine on CPP.
4319 days ago
The February issue of SpreadBet Magazine ( a free e-publication) is now out and contains – amongst other things – an article by myself on Jim Mellon’s AIM listed Port Erin Biopharma Investments (PEBI). You can download it for free by clicking on the image below.
4321 days ago
In the mad world of twitter I receive a tweet from @danpeterpanfan (who is apparently known as the village idiot of share tweeting circles”) stating “You are an imbecile!” All publicity is good publicity I guess, so naturally I retweeted this shining literary gem to all of my followers. It seems that what has aroused the anger of this total moron were statements I made a couple of months ago surrounding AIM listed Zoltav Resources (ZOL) being the “most overvalued company on AIM” or having a “joke valuation.”
The shares were then anywhere between 3p and 3.98p. They are now 4.9p. So according to the Village Idiot, I am now either an imbecile or my articles were misleading as “the value of this company has gone up sharply”. Er… no.
4343 days ago
Just a note that the January edition of SpreadBet Magazine is now out. The publication now features a monthly feature from me and this time I am writing about how bearish I am about certain junior miners but how my conviction buy for 2013 is Archipelago Resources. The mag also features stacks of other stuff from folks inccluding Dominic Picarda and my old pal Zak Mir. There appears to be no end to those happy to sign up to sub-edit Zak’s semi-literate streams of consciousness.
You can download your free glossy bumper issue HERE.
