You could not make it up. Another week. Another Neil Woodford share support operation in the Mail on Sunday. I look at Woodford and wider issues he faces at The Times and Sunday Times and their shameful role in the MySquar (MYSQ) fraud and at Purplebricks (PURP) and the fundamental weakness in its business proposition that will ultimately sink it.

Once again, I stand awed that great work by ShareProphets on identifying bad eggs is largely ignored by the mainstream media, in this case MySquar.  It's no wonder that Rob Terry has the new to saddle up with Quindell 2.0.

Warning: This podcast contains references that vegans with a sense of humour bypass (i.e 99% of them) may find offensive. In this podcast I reflect on walking past a dark restaurant in a prime location yesterday. I consider Vodafone (VOD) and the security of its dividend. Finally I ponder whether I am being far too harsh on a company ramped in a sordid manner by Justin the Clown and the Sith Lord Zak Mir and run by a total knobhead, that is to say Amur Minerals (AMC)

It is usually John Paul Getty who is given attribution for the wonderful 'by selling too soon' response to the question of how to get rich.  Selling is an important discipline and there is certainly no crime in taking a few profits...which brings us to Tate & Lyle (TATE).  Maybe I have been consuming too many sugar - or sucralose - laced products recently but I feel pretty pleased with this one, telling everyone to get stuck in earlier this year and then suggesting a hope price of 7 quid a share in May  after an initial bounce.  Well hold the front page...it has happened following Thursday's results publication. 

Celebrated fund manager John Hathaway feels that gold should be getting more of a bid, but investors remain lukewarm. In the near term, he is unsure of where gold is headed. John cautions that investors are going to become increasingly aware of the dangers of deficit spending and inflation which should cause gold to get more of a bid. A small pullback could still happen, but he doubts that there will be a retest of 2015 lows. Long-term he remains very bullish.

From the FCA's spreadsheet of short positions required to be disclosed to it, the following shows the shorted AIM shares with positions from 2017 and thus far in 2018 (by net short position %) - and if this position has increased (red), reduced (green) or remained unchanged (black) since last week...

Well, here we are again – another Woodford Unicorn has reported, this time Nowegian-listed Thin Film Electronics (OB:THIN)  with its 2018 Q3 numbers, and yet another hungry mouth to feed needs feeding, with little in the way of revenue to offer any comfort. The report starts well, but….

In this week’s article, we review five key trading updates made in November so far, and analyse how brokers and tipsters have interpreted the most recent figures.

Having warned repeatedly on this website that AIM-listed Haydale (HAYD) was in trouble and that the shares were a sell all the way down from 78p only in June of this year (and steered a wide berth at 120p in October last year), yesterday the shares crashed to just 14p last seen – a fall of 40% on the day. This follows a Financing Update which is a calamity in every way.

Hello Share Trustees. The Footsie was around 7,800 in the summer. It’s now between 7,100 and 7,200. On paper, most of us have lost big money. Though if you are using this wondrous website you will, like me, have a few penny shares in your bag. And if your choice was anything like mine then you may have had some big successes in this shaky period for the Footsie giants.

An announcement from AO World (AO.) that it is “to acquire Mobile Phones Direct”, with AO CEO Steve Caunce arguing “this deal represents a significant step forward in our strategy of developing our growing range of online electricals and adding new complementary categories that customers want and expect from AO”. The shares have responded… currently more than 7% lower, to around 125p. Hmmm…

In June of last year I noted on Flowgroup (FLOW) from “actively pursuing” sale to that business being the “primary focus” of the company in just a few months. That business was Flow Energy (residential gas and electricity supply)… and at the start of May this year it was “Completion of the sale of Flow Energy”!...

It gets worse and worse for MySquar (MYSQ) a company that I have been openly accusing of fraud for more than a year. On Monday it partially ‘fessed up. Today it got worse.

The board of mobile content licenser and distributor Mobile Streams (MOS) “is pleased to present its audited accounts for the financial year ended 30 June 2018”. The shares have responded..., er, currently approaching 25% lower, to 0.70p!...

I don't normally take broker research seriously but a) Galantas (GAL) operates in Ulster so I am biased in its favour and b) analyst Roger Bade at Whitman Howard is no fool. He reckons Galantas at 6p is worth 17.3p per share. The market cap today is £12 million but Bade explains why by 2020 the company could be generating £8 million of cashflow and by 2023 that could be £13 million and that is on uber-cautious gold price assumptions. The note (below) is very much worth a read.

In today's podcast I look again at yellow journalism re Woodford Patient Capital Trust (WPCT) as covered HERE and the MySquar (MYSQ) fraud. The corrupt deadwood press is part of the problem not the solution. I cover the latest news from MySquar in case I don't have time for a dedicated article. Today is a Joshua day but I hope to write as he takes a nap. I  also look at Mirriad (MIRI), Mosman Oil & Gas (MSMN) anmd Haydale Graphene (HAYD) whose news today means that Nigel Somerville will have enjoyed ouzo on his breakflast cornflakes.

The PR machine of Neil Woodford got its pliant servants at the Daily Mail and elsewhere in the corrupt deadwood press to make great play about how the Woodford Patient Capital Trust (WPCT) was about to go into the FTSE 250 Index so meaning that Index funds would have to buy the shares so the share price would go up. Uh Oh! Late last night came an announcement from the LSE:

The trading statement from Purplebricks (PURP), as I rather suspected, was a little short on detail and the word “profit” did not appear once...

Having been slumping at the time of my previous update at the end of last month, shares in Ascent Resources (AST) have recently nudged higher, with the company having made “Posting of Circular and Notice of General Meeting” and “Corporate Update” announcements…

Hello Share Bashers. Though still holding shares in Tesco (TSCO) and Morrison (MRW), I’d rather I didn’t. Only inertia is keeping these unexciting shares in my bag. Yes, the share prices are generally on the upward march, but progress is oh, so slow.