Having earlier noted a return to form in the top shorted London-listed shares as at the start of 2017, how was the performance of the AIM shares then shorted?

Canadian Overseas Petroleum (COPL) is a company which I have been pretty negative on in recent times, and certainly nothing has happened to change my view on it, certainly in the shorter term.

Project management and technical consultancy WYG plc (WYG) has updated having noted in its December half-year report a build-up of working capital in Turkey and that “we expect significant cash receipts from our business in Turkey before the calendar year end”…

With the shares hovering around 3p, anyone holding options in UK Oil & Gas (UKOG) exercisable at just 0.4p but expiring on 31 December 2017 would surely exercise the lot would he not? 

Early each year, we note the top shorted London-listed shares as at the start of the year. How did 2017's perform?

Hello, Share Swiggers. As this stunning website’s most bullish trader, I must be expected to give a rosy forecast for the progress of shares in 2018. And though I began last year by saying the stocks surge would probably last only 12 months, I now extend that perky period until the last quarter of this year. Here are my reasons for believing that the Footsie will end 2018 around 9,000.

The winner of the 2017 prize competition will be revealed tomorrow. We now though open the competition for 2018 - and once again the prize is a meal with myself. If you dislike me, you can fob that meal off on someone else. All you need to do before midnight on January 1st is to post in the comments section below your stock to buy and your stock to sell for 2018 (from the LSE or AIM Casino and the stocks not to currently be suspended). Steve Moore will monitor and report back monthly on how the competition is faring. Good luck all and especially, should they enter, to our favourite semi-naked Quindell & Cloudtag owning twins Hayley & Kate Whittaker, pictured below.

AIM-listed Stanley Gibbons (SGI) published its interims on Friday 29 December – the last trading day ahead of the New Year break. Worse still, it released them at 11.07am on a stock market half day. Talk about no-one-is-watching o’clock. Unfortunately, there was plenty to watch – and none of it pleasant for the company’s shareholders.

Between December 24 and January 2 we are serving up 24 share tips of the year from our team of writers at ShareProphets. The share tips are for paying subscribers only. Next up is a sell tip, the seventh pick from Tom Winnifrith.

In this podcast I look at the threat to free speech & how it does hit financial markets as well as the wider world. I look at the end of the ZIRP and silly money era and how to play it, Unicorn hunting. I look at the advent of a selective bear market, at the unwind of the Consumer debt-fest and how to play that, I look at gold which will, I think shine, in 2018 and how you should play that. And finally I touch on the real threat to your wealth and how to prepare for a Corbyn government.

Between December 24 and January 2 we are serving up 24 share tips of the year from our team of writers at ShareProphets. The share tips are for paying subscribers only. Next up is a buy tip, the seventh pick from Tom Winnifrith.

Between December 24 and January 2 we are serving up 24 share tips of the year from our team of writers at ShareProphets. The share tips are for paying subscribers only. Next up is a sell tip, the sixth pick from Tom Winnifrith.

There are serious economic challenges coming in the near future, and they are going to change all of our lives in ways that we  haven’t even considered yet. Some good, others bad.

OK, I’m breaking all the rules – the deal was two long tips and here I am with a third tip of the year and it is five stocks and they are shorts (or at least avoids). Still, as Cynical Bear knows, rules are for breaking, and in any case we both broke the rules in our suggestions for shares looking for a Christmas surge when we named two, not one.

It's been a relaxing break and we all dread being thrown unto the breach once more tomorrow, but today, take a relaxing view out the window of our final three readers.

In the last year, ShareProphets has produced 3733 articles from the scandals of Telit's Oozi Cats to the scandals of African Potash to the scandals of Cloudtag. Here are the 100 articles and 25 Bearcasts that were most read by ShareProphets readers.

Between December 24 and January 2 we are serving up 24 share tips of the year from our team of writers at ShareProphets. The share tips are for paying subscribers only. Next up is a buy tip, the second of two from the team at HotStockRockets.

I start, as ever, in Greece and with a book written in 1951. Humour me as I travel to Monemvasia. This is is about how we humans can interpret two sets of data and arrive at a conclusion that is understandable but proves utterly wrong. And that brings me to the state of the stockmarket. I explain six reasons why, for me, a correction is a when not an if but also why it may not be the end of the world.

Between December 24 and January 2 we are serving up 24 share tips of the year from our team of writers at ShareProphets. The share tips are for paying subscribers only. Next up is a buy tip, the second of two from the deputy Sheriff of AIM, Nigel Somerville.

Between December 24 and January 2 we are serving up 24 share tips of the year from our team of writers at ShareProphets. The share tips are for paying subscribers only. Next up is a sell tip, the second of two from infamous bear raider, the Bard of the Boleyn, Lucian Miers.