Yesterday Neil Woodford’s benchmark for his Equity Income and Income Focus Funds, the FTSE All-Share, put on 1% and Equity Income followed suit with a 1.11% gain in NAV per unit. But Income Focus ran up a storming 2.94% gain. It will be interesting to see how. Meanwhile joke NEX-listed Rutherford Health (RUTH) – the former Proton Partners – presented Neil with a £12.5 million bill for newly minted equity and this morning Oslobors-listed Thin Film has announced a new debt facility to keep the lights on – and yet another round of redundancies. As for other pending disasters, there is still no news from Eddie Stobart (ESL) in relation to its promise to release interims in early September, nothing from revolutionary washing machine outfit Xeros (XSG) in relation to its attempted £5-10 million fundraise and from Verseon (VERS) there is just deafening silence.

Gary Newman is a fine chap and a fine writer who I am delighted to have as a colleague. But I must take him to task for a tweet he sent last night where he is just plain wrong. The subject is i3 Energy (i3E).

Hello, Share Minstrels. It’s not often we feature a momentum play on this scintillating website. That’s because my more learned colleagues quite rightly focus on balance sheets and other fundamental data to make their choices. They rarely consider only whether a share is actually going up or down. And maybe they’re right to leave an uptrend out of their considerations. After all, there are a lot of dozy traders in the world who can buy shares when they’re not worth it. However, the trend can be your friend...

I have serious questions relating to corporate governance and related party deals at Begbies Traynor (BEG). I have communicated these to the company today and hope for answers. If I do not get them by next week I shall have to attend the AGM in Manchester and kick up a stink. None of us want that so over to Begbies...answers please. The letter is below.

I reflect on the annoversary of 9/11. I ponder points raised in today's ShareProphets radio show with Carson Block and Anthony Laiker about bull market complacency to fraud. In that vein I use Tesla (TSLA) and the legal case below as a case study. I look at Neil Woodford's latest £12.5 million woes answering reader feedback. I look at Catennae (CTEA), Riverfort Global Opportunities (RGO) and my pal Jim Mellon's Fast Forward (FFWD). I also comment on the latest Burford (BUR) news.

KRM22 (KRM) was incorporated and listed on AIM in 2018, the latter seeing emphasised “successful fundraising undertaken saw strong demand from a number of institutional and private investors, raising in total £10.32 million through the issue of 10,320,239 new ordinary shares at a price of 100p” and “identified a clear opportunity to deliver significant improvements for our target customers, through our underlying investments, by providing a suite of cost effective risk management tools”. Today a “Trading Update”…

Oh dear. Oh dear. That’s another fine mess you’ve got me into say unit holders in the Equity Income Fund (EIF) and shareholders in Woodford Patient Capital Trust (WPCT) today as hapless Neil reveals another £12.5 million black hole.

Previously writing on Gulf Marine Services (GMS), last month I concluded including I wish that candidate luck! There should be more detail on what they face here with 11th September-scheduled half-year results. And now… “Re-scheduling Interim Results Release Date”. Uh oh – and re-scheduled to when?...

The latest edition of ShareProphets Radio features an hour long interview with Carson Block of Muddy Waters discussing Burford (BUR) in great detail. In the interests of balance, an investor with a long position, Caro-Kann Capital, has published its detailed rebuttal of Muddy Waters and you can read that report below. On balance I agree with Muddy Waters.

I3Energy (I3E) told us about the disappointing results from its LPt-02 well on Tuesday this week. Gary Newman commented on this and concluded the jury was out on it being a stock to buy or sell or hold. I am rather less positive for a number of reasons. I sold, and remain negative on fundamentals.

Columbus Energy Resources (CERP) has updated including it “has now successfully completed workover operations to survey downhole the AT-4 and AT-13 wells on the Inniss-Trinity IPSC in preparation for future CO₂ injection and enhanced oil production” as it continues to advance a pilot project it believes has the potential to transform oil & gas operations in the field and in similar fields in Trinidad…

Yesterday Neil Woodford’s benchmark for his Equity Income and Income Focus Funds, the FTSE All-Share, put on 0.4% - as did the FTSE 100. But his two unit trusts again put on more. Has the tide turned? With a long queue of disasters in the making, I rather doubt it...

Hello, Share Troopers. Previously, I’ve written on the huge potential of life science companies which explore antibodies and antibody substitutes in the fight against serious conditions. Allow me to put another such firm before you. Tiziana Life Sciences (TILS) is biotechnology outfit which uses antibodies to find new treatments for inflammatory diseases and cancers...

In this eighth edition of the ShareProphets Radio podcast, sponsored by Yorkville Advisors, in order I discuss my guest next week (the biggest name yet on the show) and Burford (BUR) and the more general issue of revenue recognition. I then chat for about an hour to liberatrian comedian, songwriter and singer, Brexit Party activist, gold & bitcoin guru Dominic Frisby. Prepare for a few laughs. Then it is Cathal Friel of Open Orphan (ORPH), where I am a shareholder, and finally David Bramhill of Union Jack Oil (UJO). After that section I discuss nearology with reference to Union Jack, UK Oil & Gas (UKOG) and more generally.  If you like this and can't wait seven days for more of the same you should listen to my Bearcast every day.

Any negative news on an oil drill tends to see the share price getting hammered, and that is exactly what has happened today after I3 Energy (I3E) announced that a pilot well had failed to hit the reservoir that it was targeting.

 Goetz is the company's retained broker so is biased but the 55 page note below which came out today is detailed. I am a big shareholder and regard the target as, of anything, cautious given that the chairman bought shares less than a year ago at 97p. Judge for yourself...

Self-styled “pioneer in solid-state battery technology and materials innovation” Ilika (IKA) “announces the offer of a further £0.9m funding directly to Ilika under the UK Government's Faraday Battery Challenge: Innovation R&D, round three, for the 'Granite project', via the UK's innovation agency, Innovate UK… The consortium's expertise, backed by Government financial support, will allow Britain's best talent to be brought to bear, so that the UK can take the lead in this transformative technology”…

Looking through the accounts of AIM-listed Eddie Stobart (ESL) to establish who the possible bidder is, in the wake of the company's suspension from trading on AIM on late accounts and an accounting scandal, something caught my eye. The FY17 accounts note a £475,000 interest-free related party loan to directors of a subsidiary company!

I felt a bit of a fool yesterday morning. No doubt there are some who argue that this should be a perpetual state of affairs for me, but the specific reason was that on Friday someone had asked me about Lloyds Banking Group (LLOY) shares and in the light of the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) and shocking CYBG (CYBG) PPI updates, I said something along the lines that 'if Lloyds had something material to say then surely it would have said it by now'…

Yesterday the FTSE All-Share, Neil Woodford’s benchmark for his Equity Income (WEIF) and Income Focus (WIFF) funds, dropped a further 0.4%. Meanwhile WEIF put on 0.24% per unit and WIFF gained 0.17% per unit. Good news – and Eddie Stobart (ESL) announced a takeover approach. A good day then. Well, up to a point.