As you may know I like the management at Big Dish (DISH) and its PR guru/Digital Communications Officer the Sith Lord Zak Mir is one of my very few friends. Pro tem. As such it pains me to say this but this company is now shown, with the publication of its results,  to have lied to the market on May 30^th  2019 in the most serious of ways, just eight days ahead of a £2.1 million placing.  This should be jail time for someone.

Stranger Holdings ( STHP) is one of the stable of worthless and pointless companies on the Standard List run by Charles Tatnall & James Longley which this website has done so much to expose.  Results out today for the year to March 31 2019 are sheer comedy: related party deals, accounting errors, an abandoned RTO and one that surely will be, a pretence that the company is not insolvent which, of course it is, even a cynical bear would be shocked by this nonsense.

Time to confess an unpopular opinion. I do actually believe that some of the large banks are cheap. Obviously that does not include bad boy Metro Bank (MTRO), which is now neither large nor credible as discussed in a bunch of articles by me on this website. No, I was rather thinking about Lloyds (LLOY), whose shares slipped below tangible book value yesterday following PPI claim-influenced results, or Barclays (BARC), which reported earlier today…

‘Social video company’ Brave Bison (BBSN) announced results for the first half of 2019 including “9% increase in revenue to £10.1 million… adjusted EBITDA of £247,000… (H1 2018: £79,000)”. The shares have responded, er, towards 1.5p – approaching 20% lower!…

Oh dear, Kier! Neil Woodford’s last Hail Mary - otherwise known as his great gamble on Kier Group (KIE) - put a hole in his Income Focus Fund (WIFF) as investors realised that the promised end-of-July trading update wasn’t happening and WIFF lost a chunky 1.08% in NAV per unit yesterday, according to Morningstar. And having battled back to £290.20 million, the fund fell away to £286.74 million...

Hello Share Thrashers. From being sceptical about retailers being able to grow their share prices, I am beginning to change my mind. Well, for selected chains at least. One company which I think might buck a downward trend is Next (NXT)...

In today's bearcast I look at Brave Bison (BBSN), Kier (KIE), Intu (INTU), Dignity (DTY) and Aston Martin Lagonda (AML). If you are interested in Versarien (VRS), as a bull or a bear, you MUST listen to today's ShareProphets radio HERE

Like buses, shocks often come in groups of three. Today though, in a fit of shocker enthusiasm, I count four that I have recently written about and warned you on. As Tom reminded me during my recent appearance on ShareProphets Radio, perhaps I should get serious about dusting down my ancient shorting skills given my historic schooling at a long-short equity fund. Anyhow, let us stack them up…

I commented that I had bought shares in fully-listed Egyptian gold miner Centamin (CEY) at around £1 with the proceeds of my part-sale  of AIM-listed Turkish goldie Ariana (AAU), partly thanks to Gary Newman who thought that the shares had overreacted to bad news. This morning Centamin reported its Interims…..

Neil Woodford cash-hungry dog Atom Bank has produced its Annual Report for the year to March 2019. As you can see HERE  it is a beautiful document full of nice pictures and lots of blurb to keep the sheep happy. But no amount of presentation can hide the truth: it burning cash and – incredibly – lending at a loss! That’s not a business, that’s a charity!

There should have been a trading statement from Kier on 30^th July. There has not been. Why?

Many AIM oilers just frustrate me with RNS announcements that either don’t need to be made or fail to disclose key information investors need to make sense of the investment case. The Parkmead Group (PMG) is at the opposite end of the spectrum. Ignoring price monitoring extension and holding RNS’s, we have had a grand total of 9 RNS’s in 18 months, 2 of which relate to loans to the Exec chairman’s wife’s company! That just bloody irritates me, but I hold.

You can’t beat a spot of bad press and Neil Woodford has certainly had his fair share, again renewed over the last few days, with the revelation that he dumped around £1 million worth of WPCT three weeks previously and the continued gating of his flagship fund. Meanwhile, this morning’s data from Morningstar shows that whilst his lesser (but at least still open for business) Woodford Income Focus Fund (WIFF) put on 0.48% in NAV per unit yesterday.

Silver and gold mining giant Fresnillo (FRES) has always been a good leveraged play on commodity prices, and is a favourite amongst both investors and traders looking for exposure to precious metals.

OK, we’ve heard it all before! But this morning’s interim results from AIM-listed Minoan (MIN) do seem to suggest that things are at last moving in terms of monetising the holiday resort in Crete. Much has changed over the last year or so, but much remains the same too.

I commented recently on Independent Oil and Gas (IOG) and how I considered the Harvey drill was crucial to the company’s future and a farm-out prior to the result was very unlikely. Well I was wrong on the latter point, as last Friday the company announced a farm-out to CalEnergy Resources Ltd, part of the Berkshire Hathaway Empire. The detail however only reinforces my view the Harvey drill is critical to the company, and if anything, is now even more important.

Hello, Share Catchers. I believe my second biggest holding is BP (BP.), so I was initially disappointed by the news that underlying profit was down in quarter number 2 compared to the same time in 2018...

Once again, please excuse my croaky voice. In this second edition of the ShareProphets Radio podcast sponsored by Riverfort Global Capital, this week, in order I discuss the cowardice of a well known AIM CEO, interview bear raider Lucian Miers on a wide range of subjects including Tesla, Neil Woodford and WPCT, IQE, Purplebricks, UK Oil & Gas, Thomas Cook and cannabis, I then interview value blue chip investor Chris Bailey on, inter alia, Tesla, EasyJet, Imperial Brands, Woodford, Burberry, Dignity, and St James Place. Enjoy. If you like this and can't wait seven days for more of the same you should listen to my Bearcast every day.

Columbus Energy Resources (CERP) has updated on activity towards drilling in the South West Peninsula, Trinidad…

Immotion (IMMO) has announced “following the success of its recent VR installations into a range of high quality partners, that it has decided to focus its strategy predominantly on the roll out of its Partnership Model into high footfall locations. The visibility of higher margins and recurring revenues delivered from this model is, the directors believe, the best strategy for the group and its shareholders. To support this strategy, the company is carrying out a fundraising”…