Consumer home-testing healthcare company MyHealthChecked (MHC) has announced results for the first half of 2022 including noting a new portfolio and associated launches which it is “excited to share with the market in Q4”.

I start with a question for you all ( except Nigel Wray and Nick Leslau): should the Mrs and I fix our mortage next April. Then onto Boohoo (BOO) and the timing of its next trading warning. For Boohoo also see Sosandar, etc, etc. Finally I wonder which academic will be brave enough to run an exercise correlating boardroom diversity with share price performance in 2022. You and I can work out what the result will be and also that there is no causal link but who will dare say it for exposes the boardroom diversity MUST be good line for the canard that it always has been.

While there is disagreement among the investment experts about whether inflation, stagflation or outright recessionary deflation is on the horizon, there seems to be a consensus that times are going to be tough for a the rest of this year and 2023.

Two stocks I do own in my pension fund portfolio are Burberry (BRBY) and GSK plc (GSK) but I see there has been a little bit of interesting interaction news between the two FTSE-100 names...  

Since the first question last week was completely daft, I’m giving you a simple one on the first question this week. IWrite your score in the comments, there are no prizes, and most important of all – no Googling! It’s Mystic Meg. Choose Mystic Meg.

Gold closed the week at a sickly looking $1645, down from last week’s $1676. There was to be no bounce at around $1675. But in a week when the Fed again raised interest rates by 0.75% - the third such hike in succession – you could be forgiven for wondering why Gold has not headed even lower. Inflation remains on the rampage in the US, and until that reverses the Fed is likely to continue hiking…..or until something in the economy breaks, as it continues to gaze into the rear view mirror. Over here, however, the big news was the crunching of sterling in the face of Friday’s non-budget budget. Whilst Gold has been struggling against the US dollar, it raced towards of its year high against sterling and is now just £57 off the all-time high as markets took fright at Truss-onomics.

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 non Darren article is “The View From The Montana Log-Cabin As Gold Heads Lower Again” by Nigel Somerville at number 5 or number 10 if you include Bearcasts.

I start the podcast with a few macro musings then onto the Lucian Miers stock check list for bears and bulls before looking at Argo Blockchain (ARB) and how it could be a zero by Christmas.

Two weeks ago today at Sharestock, I spoke about Victoria Carpets Plc  (VCP) and outlined the reasons why I thought it still had the makings of a good short, despite its fall from £12 in January when I last wrote on it. Although the stock closed yesterday at just 427p, the share price gyrations of the past fortnight underline why I stated that right now might not be  a great time to open the short. The shares raced ahead post Sharestock but are now 53p below the share price then.