Of course not! The last reported NAV of AIM-listed jam-tomorrow- next year-never IoT investment company Tern (TERN) was 7.0p, as stated in its FY19 results. This followed a year during which the company raised £3.25 million at a premium to NAV, but still saw a reduction in NAV per share. I guess that is operational gearing at play!

I can understand why investors are unwilling to sell, or short, companies which trade at a significant discount to NAV, some even being tempted to average down, or in the case of new, would be value seekers, to pile in. Particularly with indebted companies this is a dangerous game and more often than not, the bigger the discount, the bigger is the danger…

To put this in context, even morally bankrupt Nomad SP Angel, the Nomad of choice for fraudsters, does not think this news is financially significant and so has forced ramping Neill Ricketts to alert his moronic investors via an RNS reach not an RNS.  Natch, folks who think it’s okay to murder journalists don’t care about facts so Versarien (VRS) shares are up 12% at 46p – an £8 million increase in market cap on news that even the Nomad thinks is financially irrelevant!

Having asked for readers tips for 2020 for the prize of 1/2 litre of Tom Winnifrith’s Greek Hovel olive oil (2020 harvest) HERE, the following is an update on performance at the end of July (to be eligible needed to have selected, on a per username basis, a buy & sell pick from the LSE or AIM casino and the stocks not to have been suspended at the commencement of 2020)…

Hello, Share Pickers. The lockdown seems to have made more people appreciate their homes, rather than get fed up with them. So any company which aims to make interiors more attractive might be expected to shine these days. With that in mind, may I draw your attention to Headlam Group (HEAD), a floorcoverings company? The latest figures bear out what I’ve just opined, as this company’s July revenue in Blighty is up on last year’s…

I will start writing up my Greek diary tomorrow when I feel a bit more rested after the travel. But in this podcast, I give you a taster of a few of my thoughts and of life here in Kambos where I shook a man’s hand for the first time in months yesterday. I also look at the latest Covid madness from bonkers Boris and at BP (BP.) and the question of its dividend. Of course it should be slashed and if it is, I’d expect the shares to bounce.

Try to make sure that you are on the right side of the trade

We hear that, until Covid struck, Vela (VELA) was working on an interesting RTO. But that is in the past. The reality is that the company is cash constrained and cannot repay a £550,000 bond due in a few weeks. So we have a Peterhouse special.  The shares are suspended at 0.07p until the deal is approved an EGM (which is a given) and so until August 26, we must wait.

Analyst Andy Schectman of Miles Franklin makes a very compelling case for past market manipulation by large banks like JP Morgan. He sees a perfect storm coming soon – one where there will be no safe haven assets except precious metals. He argues that bonds no longer have real returns when you consider inflation and are guaranteed to lose money.

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? 

Very excited shareholder Tom Winnifrith writes: On 26 May 2020, Steve and I tipped SkinBiotherapeutics (SBTX) at a 17.75p offer and at up to 20p with a target price of 30p. News last week suggests that, notwithstanding this company wasting a few grand a month employing the biggest knobhead in Christendom to do its PR, we were more than a tad conservative and the shares now trade at 22p-23.5p and are still dirt cheap.

This has nothing to do with shares or investing or anything. It’s the end of the weekend and we’ve organised a quick pub quiz. Grab your own beer, there are no prizes, and for Pete’s sake, no Googling! Only I get to do that. If you are so inclined, please enter your score in the comments. The highest score still won’t get a prize.

Did you notice how busy the last week was for UK corporate earnings and related news?  And if you were expecting any respite next week, then forget it.  For me – with my global investment hat on – this just feels like par for the course for the busy part of the corporate earnings season.  Apparently though, it is getting busier with forty members of the FTSE-350 reporting on two successive days (Wednesday and Thursday) in the week just gone – and Friday was a manic last day of the week compared to the norm.  

The most read non-Tom article this week is Why Tiziana Life Sciences is such a compelling slam dunk short by Evik Banksta is at a sensational number one or number five including Bearcasts and Tom’s new shareshow.

This is a strange correction in gold, as the gold price has continued higher and closed last night at a monthly, weekly and all-time record high! Gold stocks are a shade off recent highs, but only just. Where I sit relaxing on the veranda of my log-cabin with my baked beans warming over the fire, it seems that on the one hand the gold market wants a correction which is surely overdue, but the economic data just keeps on getting worse and worse, forcing another surge…

I start with how Boris is wrecking the UK economy. I truly despair. Then I discuss the daft comparison with the years that followed Spanish flu. I then move onto the growing banking crisis. Finally, I discuss the idea that industries will change 100% to avoid human contact. I explain why this is not the case with reference to an industry I know well, investor shows. The maths does not stack up and most humans, though not me natch, are social creatures. There is a lot of hot money betting on the world changing completely. It will not.

Tiziana Life Sciences (TILS) was last week’s AIM ramp, briefly touching 300p on Friday (a £506 million market cap) before closing for the weekend at 268p. It’s more than 10-bagged from its 24p low at the end of February and, as you might have guessed, the reason is because it’s a coronavirus ramp…

Trader David Kranzler, of Investment Research Dynamics, argues that the dollar index doesn’t explain the recent move up in gold and particularly silver. While the dollar has room to move quite a bit lower, the world still has a solid need for dollars. The excessive money printing could put a lot of pressure on the dollar, and the recent move in gold could be due to investors anticipating such a drop.

From the FCA’s spreadsheet of short positions required to be disclosed to it, the following shows the shorted AIM shares with positions from 2019 and thus far in 2020 (by net short position %, those in bold not on the list at the start of 2020) – and if this position has increased (red), reduced (green) or remained unchanged (black) since last week…

Jubilee Metals (JLP), an AIM and Altx traded metals processing company, has recently followed a “pleased to announce” six month operations update with a compelling presentation at MineProphets and at a current 4.6p offer price…