Lucian Miers and I are the targets of a takented shareholder in Versarien (VRS). Okay the guy is a moron but his cartoons are good. The hero of each picture is piss taking Neil Ricketts.  The villains are we bears.

It was Cynical Bear who celebrated the fact that Pembridge Resources (PERE) – now of the Standard List (but suspended) had achieved the dubious honour of being both a ShareProphets AIM-China Filthy Forty company and on its transfer to the Standard List made his own Sub-Standard XI. Last night, at no-one-is-watching (except ShareProphets, naturally) at 5.51pm the company released its FY18 results. To say they were truly shocking would be the understatement of the year.

On 30th May 2018 Maestrano (MNO) was “delighted with the success of our AIM admission and associated capital raising” - £6 million at 15p per share, with it considering it “now well positioned to scale the business substantially” and noting “the AIM journey began when we participated in a UK Department of International Trade Fintech mission to London”. Today an intra-day (10:36am) “Trading Update”. Uh oh…

On 29 January 2019 Westminster Group (WSG) the dog chaired by ex Tory MP Tony “fatso” Baldry of 3DM infamy issued a ramptastic trading statement to ramp its shares up to 12p allowing it to do a bailout, keep the lights on, placing at 10p a few days later. Now, as it prepares for its next bailout placing we have more grim news marking the company out as utterly uninvestable. First the mess of its accounts.

Provider of online B2B platforms for the UK conveyancing and financial intermediary markets, ULS Technology (ULS) has updated including of “a strong gross margin performance… continues to generate strong cash flow… maintain the group's policy of paying a progressive dividend”. So why are the shares currently, on the back of the update, at 70p – 9% lower?...

How was April for you? Well Next (NXT) had a good time as per today's trading update observing that 'full price sales in the thirteen weeks to Saturday 27 April were up +4.5% on last year. This was +1.3% ahead of our internal forecast of +3.2% for the first quarter. We believe this over performance versus forecast was mainly as a result of unusually warm weather over the Easter holiday period, which was particularly helpful to our Retail stores'…

Earlier this week it was announced that Neil Woodford had dumped his entire holding in peer-to-peer lender P2P Global (P2P), worth around £88 million – the stake being bought by Quilter. Yesterday it was announced that he has sold his entire holding in another player in the speciality lending game, VPC Speciality Lending Investments (VSL). How are those redemptions going, Neil?...

The shares are down on the day by a couple of pence at 72p-75p. The press release was long, verbose and not well crafted. As a loyal shareholder, I found a long chat with boss Steve O’Hara far more constructive. Optibiotix (OPTI) has never been in a better place and thus its shares are very cheap and a strong buy...

For all the positive vibes surrounding Spain’s second largest lender, BBVA, perhaps landing a bid for Woodford unlisted banking startup dog Atom Bank, it seems that at least for now the deal is off the table: BBVA has missed the deadline to exercise its option. So no big payday for Neil Woodford’s beleaguered investors, then...

Hello, Share Clangers. When I’m away on business, which is rather too often for my liking, I prefer to stay in Premier Inns. My reason is not that I think they’re great but that because, as a shareholder, I nab two nights for one at weekends. However, I don't hold the shares for this handy perk, but because the room prices are comparatively cheap – which is what stingy customers want these days...

It has not been a good day. Firstly the Mrs left a door not fully closed and two cats have become one, Quincey has gone AWOL. Then I had to watch a crazy cat woman Carole Cadwalladr video for the sake of Woodlarks. Finally we have suffered a DOS attack. Someone does not like our exposes of fraud and malpractice. We will not be silenced. As you consider my Cadwalladr suffering please donate to Rogue Bloggers for Woodlarks HERE. In the podcast I cover Neil Woodford, Xeros (XSG), Eight Peaks (8PG), Alien Metals (UFO), African Battery Metals (ABM), Countrywide (CWD), Purplebricks (PURP) and the quoted housebuilders.

Oh dear oh dear oh dear. I commented at the weekend HERE that AIM- and now Nasdaq-listed Mereo Biopharma (AIM: MPH, Nasdaq: MREO) has FY18 results due this Monday, following Mereo’s merger with Oncomed on Nasdaq. Duly reported, how’s that extended cash runway doing?

Self-styled developer of “disruptive water saving technologies”, Xeros (XSG) has announced 2018 results headlined “good progress towards licensing model”. Natch, with “disruptive” being bandied about here, Woodford’s also about (39.71% shareholding). “Good progress” then?...

Last Thursday evening I revealed in a bit of a scoop that Audioboom (BOOM) was trying to raise £8 million at 2.5p. The next morning the company was forced into a statement and said it was trying to raise £5 million at 2.5p. That was not really true - I published the deck the wretched company had sent to potential investors showing it was trying to raise £8 million. Today it fessed up that it has raised just £2.8 million with £1.2 million of that coming from the board and the Candy Brothers chucking good money after bad. What a shower…

Large mining projects often take a long time and huge amounts of investment before they finally come to fruition and actually start producing the raw material and a revenue stream. During that time the share price can experience a lot of volatility and I remain to be convinced that the majority of PIs have the patience to invest long term in this type of company, and in some cases there is an argument for buying in closer to production once everything has been sorted out and financing has been finalised...

Lots of numbers and comments out today...

Well surprise, surprise – Cynical Bear was right! Standard-list posterboy Challenger Acquisitions (CHAL) reported its FY18 results last night at 5.24pm, hoping that nobody was looking. Unfortunately for its CEO, ShareProphets was watching and the numbers are absolutely dire. With net current liabilities of £3.2 million, it has a mountain to climb...

Writing on plastic injection moulding and tooling, engineering products and boards and panels manufacturing group Tex Holdings (TXH) a couple of weeks ago, I questioned just an accounting factor though?. At 5:22pm yesterday, “Statement re. Suspension”. Uh oh…

A reader says that he will donate £500 to Rogue Bloggers for Woodlarks if I watch and critique a talk by the crazy cat woman Carole Cadwalladr on how the Brexit vote was stolen For Woodlarks I will do anything, even this: please donate HERE. Of course, I knew Carole at Oxford ( same college, year below me) so I know what a fraud she is.

Hello, Share Changers. You already know that pubs are closing down at an alarming rate. But that’s not bad news for the ones that stay in business, especially the pub chains. When the competition disappears, the higher spending customers have to find somewhere else to tipple...