Sub scale technology investment waste of space company Vela (VELA) has today announced that it has hired a new PR and IR firm Novum to ramp its shares. Novum, aka my old pal Alan Green, I have a question for you about the gap in the website CV of your boss Brent Fitzpatrick, the one linking him to a convicted fraudster and jailbird.

Hello Share Cheerers. A company in the brick trade I've commended before is flying higher than expected. Ibstock (IBST) makes bricks and other building blocks. And you would anticipate success in this continuing bull market for houses and flats.

I discuss the trip yesterday, from one hovel to another. Then, it is onto Audioboom (BOOM); musicMagpie (MMAG); two more sector-specific lessons from the AIM demise of W Resources (WRES); what McColls (MCLS) said today; and finally, three reasons to sell the hell out of green shite PI darling, Eqtec (ETQ).

Behavioural science-based business improvement company Mind Gym (MIND) has issued a trading update including “revenue is expected to be £47.9m, up 25 per cent on FY21 (in constant currency) and up 5 per cent on pre-Covid levels… adjusted PBT for the year is expected to be in line with board expectations”. So what of a 130p share price, down from over 190p as recently as October?...

It is now just 7 weeks away, and I really must start training as soon as I am back in Wales. I hope that my fellow walkers (Miers, Basham, Basham's trainer, Bell, Moore and two readers of this website who seem frighteningly keen and fit) are better prepared. Anyhow, train I will, for it is a great cause. We have now raised 4% of our £50,000 target, but, fear not; I shall be begging almost daily from now onwards.  

Today, this was announced via RNS Reach, but, surely, it is significant. In a bad way. In its IPO Prospectus of a year ago, musicMagpie (MMAG) said it faced no competition. That was a lie. It already had, in the form of E5 billion, Unicorn Back Market. Today, music states it will also sell its electronic goods on Back.  The financials…

An "excitable" Monday on the markets! I see that it has helped pull the FTSE 100 back to a small loss year-to-date. Well at least it is a lot better than peers in all the rest of the developed world. Meanwhile, did you see the headline that “Asda and Morrisons drop prices to help struggling shoppers”. So what does that mean for names such as Tesco (TSCO), J Sainsbury (SBRY) and Ocado (OCDO) among others?

Insig AI (INSG) “is pleased to announce that a London based alternative investment manager with in excess of $1 billion of assets under management has signed a development contract to deliver a centralised cloud-based data infrastructure”. With also a trading update and board changes, what of a current 28.5p share price?...

Since my last expose of the demining state of affairs at Lombard Capital (LCAP), things have gone from bad to worse. But now, enter stage left a man who was once the 57^th richest person in Britain (or not), but then turned out to be a fraudster and was sent to the slammer. It gets better….

Long-term Michael Masterman, of AIM dog W Resources (WRES), has announced that its Nomad, Grant Thornton, and its joint brokers, Alternative Resource Capital and Shard Capital, have all resigned with immediate effect. The question is: did they resign or were they resigned?

As we await the latest heavily discounted bucket shop bailout placing – or worse – from AIM-listed UK Oil & Gas (UKOG), we have already had ramptastic 2D seismic processing from its duff Turkish assets and this morning it was announced that CEO Lyin’ Steve Sanderson has been buying shares. Quick, follow the man……..or not!

On November 17, I told you to short McColls (MCLS) at 14.5p, warning that, just months after a big placing, it was going to run out of money. Of course, everyone else knew better than old Tom. Today, the shares are 3.94p, and now, it is the company warning you the shares are heading for zero.

Hello Share Splurgers. It’s my humble view that anyone holding shares in companies which actually produce oil, rather than just look for it, should not sell. Not while the oil price holds up. Oil has not been valued quite so highly recently. But I think it’s probably only taking a breather before it jets off to new highs.

i3 Energy (I3E) has announced delivery on a farm-in by Europa Oil & Gas (EOG) to the New Serenity Block and it to “now commence the detailed planning and permitting process for the Serenity appraisal well, which we now expect to spud in late Q3”.

The Schroder UK Public Private Trust (SUPP) (formerly Woodford Patient Capital Trust, WPCT) announced its full year results for calendar 2021 on Thursday. The headline was that NAV was, after the company’s three-monthly recalculation with regard to its unlisted dross, 48.08p – strongly up from 35p at FY20. So good news?

That was quite a week – having started in risk-on mode, all the major indices were slapped down on Friday, US treasuries fell away yet again and gold and silver slumped as the week drew to a close. Gold ended the week at $1,932, down from $1,974 a week ago, having bounced off resistance at $2,000. Meanwhile the Dow closed down 2.8% on Friday, alongside a 2.6% drop on the Nasdaq and a 1.4% fall from the FTSE100. The 10-year US Treasuries closed the week on a yield of 2.9% whilst 2-year hit 2.67%. The reason for the end-of-week squall was the Fed.

I record looking up at the mountains behind the Greek Hovel. Why on earth are we heading back to Wales? I shall miss this place badly. Then, onto Netflix. Finally, I explain why Malcolm is wrong on shares generally, but also on Gear4Music (GFM), where the only unknown is the scale of the share price collapse, a process far from complete.

Grab a cup of tea, sit back, and test your knowledge against the other ShareProphets members. Write your score in the comments, there are no prizes, and most important of all – no Googling!

Here are five long reads that have nothing to do with shares. Put the kettle on, find a comfy chair. You have the time, don’t you? 
 

These are the most-read articles and most listened-to Bearcasts of the week. The most read non-Tom is Centamin – Q1 Disappoints, Or Does It? by Nigel Somerville at Number 3 or Number 10 if you include Bearcasts.