ShareProphets earns a small commission any time a reader who registered with Primary Bid via ourselves subscribes for one of its offers. For that reason we urge you all to sign up HERE. Normally, we  spite ourselves and slate Primary Bid offers but today's offer, Duke Royalty (DUKE) is actually a business of substance with institutional support, profits, cash generated and which upped its most recent dividend by 33%.  It looks interesting.

I guess I should offer my congratulations to BP (BP,) chief executive Bob Dudley who next February will retire from the position (and the company) after the thick end of a decade in charge.  Some of the plaudits I read about him being the man 'who saved' BP after the Gulf of Mexico debacle are a touch wide of the mark, but certainly he was a force for stability and continuation.  BP shareholders loving up their edged up dividend over the last five years will no doubt agree.  

I start with a row I had with the Mrs on Brexit. It is pertinent to what follows so bear with me No Gold. I then move on to a different sort of socialist to the Mrs, my grandfather Sir John Winnifrith and his comrade in arms Tony Benn, that is to say Lord Drayson of Sensyne (SENS) where revelations yesterday were shocking. Oh, and that poltroon Neil Woodford is involved too.

From the FCA's spreadsheet of short positions required to be disclosed to it, the following shows the shorted AIM shares with positions from 2018 and thus far in 2019 (by net short position %, those in bold not on the list at the start of 2019) – and if this position has increased (red), reduced (green) or remained unchanged (black) since last week...

Hello, Share Sweepers. There are loads of websites and newspaper columns advising on which shares to buy and even sell. But I know of none that warns us of the scores of dodgy companies listed in this country. Except this glittering website. And nobody reading its deluge of scoops which arrive in a constant stream can be unimpressed by the diamond quality of the investigative journalists we have here.

Eleven days ago I exposed the funding crisis at AIM casino dog Brady (BRY) which it, and its Nomad Lagos Securities, had hidden from investors for a long time, The shares were then 26p.  Thanks to my correspondence with AIM Regulation it was forced to, at least partially, ‘fess up to its problems. As I write the shares are now 4.05p having crashed another 46% today. Time for an urgent statement and share suspension methinks. Specifically we need to know:

Having lost his last chum in the media today, Neil Woodford’s flagship Equity Income Fund has plunged in value since it was gated in early June from £3.7 billion to just over £2.9 billion – a 21% fall in four months when there were no redemptions. That is entirely down to Woodford’s stock trading genius. So….

“Manufacturer and supplier of innovative ingredient solutions for the flavour, fragrance, beverage and consumer product industries”, Treatt (TET) has updated on trading including “a very encouraging 16% growth in non-citrus revenues… As new capacity at our US facility comes on stream the business will begin to see the benefits from this investment and, as we look forward to moving into our new UK facility later next year, the board enters the year ahead with confidence”. The shares though are currently around 414p, down from 480p reached in the summer…

Now in its 24^th year the annual obscenity that is the AIM Awards Dinner is now just six days away. Tickets cost £200 a pop and Nomads, brokers, lawyers, accountants and PR firms snap up all 1200 of them. It is an osbcene beanfeast for the crony capitalists.

In today's podcast I look at Reabold Resources (RBD), debagged by myself earlier, Bahamas Petroleum (BPC), Anglo African Oil & Gas (AAOG) and Bidstack (BIDS). and, with a hat tip to Andrew Monk, I look at the species known as a Bulletin Board Ramper.

Live entertainment-focused Reach4Entertainment (R4E) has announced results for the first half of 2019 and that “we look forward to the rest of the year with confidence”…

SRT Marine Systems (SRT) “is pleased to provide a trading update for the six months trading period ended 30th September 2019” – it includes “forecast half year loss before tax of £1.5m compared to £1.3m for the same period last year”, though “we remain comfortable with market expectations”. What are these expectations then?...

The Daily Telegraph's lamentable Questor column has today, finally, as you can see below, advised folks to sell Neil Woodford's Patient Capital Trust (WPCT) at a loss of 60%. Talk about horses and stable doors! It gets worse.

Thanks to the Winnileaks service I have in my possession the presentation Reabold Resources (RBD) is serving up as it endeavours to raise up to £30 million. I gather it is tough going. The deal will come as a shock to joint brokers Turner Pope and Whitman Howard as it is Stifel Europe that is acting as broker. The presentation says the deal will be announced October 8. Ho Ho.

Yesterday the FTSE All-Share, Neil Woodford's benchmark for his Equity Income and Income Focus unit trusts, dropped again - this time by 0.64%. But as predicted yesterday, the Woodford funds scored much worse with drops in NAV per unit of 1.83% and 1.56% respectively. The latest drop pushed Woodford Equity Income (WEIF) down to £2.93 billion in total funds - a whopping drop of 21% from the £3.7 billion it sat at before it was gated four months ago. And just so that we do not miss out WPCT, I see that The Telegraph has dumped it this morning.

Hello, Share Daisies. Looking through vintage family photographs, I came across a set of four mini portraits of my dashing youth. They were neatly labelled ‘Photome’. And this company name crops up everywhere because it almost had a monopoly on self-taking photo booths. And it still does.

BigDish (DISH) “is pleased to announce that it has reached an agreement with NFS Technology Group to integrate BigDish within its Point of Sale software solution for restaurants” – noting “NFS Technology Group have been operating for over 20 years and has over 1,500 clients”. The shares are though currently more than 4% lower on the day at 3.25p. Hmmm…

If you cross certain percentage ownership of a listed company you are meant to submit a note to that company, a TR1, within days. The company then alerts investors via RNS. But the system is a joke as we see again today with Yu Group (YU.)

Well that only took four days – well done Woodford Patient Capital (WPCT) and its Chair, Susan Searle. On Monday it announced the appointment of Mr Raymond Abbott as a new director – but got one of his former companies wrong, missed out another and has still neglected to mention that Foresight 4 VCT suffered a £30 million accounting error on his watch as chairman of the audit committee,,an error under FCA investigation, and a further £3 million accounting error after he was rewarded for his outstanding service and promoted to Chairman of the company.

In the demise of Thomas Cook (TCG) there was a degree of focus in the Press on the use on Non-GAAP metrics (“GAAP” being generally accepted accounting policies) and Ernst & Young’s role as auditor in auditing those measures.  However, the Deadwood Press as usual missed the wider story.