In tandem to completion of the required farm-in expenditure of $500,000 at the Gubong mine, Bluebird Merchant Ventures (BMV) has announced signing of the joint venture agreement.

Hello Share Chasers. There aren’t many companies launching on AIM which have such a stable provenance as Fulcrum Utility Services (FCRM). Until that change eight years ago, it was part of the mighty National Grid and its business is pipes and electricity cables. Not very glamorous work, you might say. But there’s excitement building over the firm and its possible rosy future in the electric car adventure.

Yesterday at 7 AM Air Partner (AIR) fessed up to a £3.3 million black hole in its accounts via RNS but it was vague as to its nature and suggested that nothing big was going on. At 10.15 AM all eighty staff in the Gatwick Office were called into a meeting with CEO Mark Briffa and FD Neil Morris for a briefing. They were told far, far more. One of those present has come forward and states: 

Intercede Group (IGP) “is pleased to announce that a large US Federal Government order totaling $4.0m was received on 28 March 2018. The order includes software licenses and annual support & maintenance; $2.05m (£1.46m) of which will be recognised in the financial year ended 31 March 2018”. Great, ahead of expectations then?…

Hope springs eternal in the human breast though it has been tested to destruction for those who ever invested in gold miner, Metals Exploration (MTL). In the late summer of 2016 I thought the worst of iis woes were over. I was wrong for which humble apologies.

If you are my age you may remember the song, it was a hit when I lived there and today i head over to stay with the same folks as i lived with more than 30 years ago.  Ahead of that there are more words on the gender pay gap data abuse as covered in detail HERE and then I cover  Vela (VELA) and a bursting blockchain bubble, Vitesse Media (VIS)  - opportunistic scumbags - Infrstrata (INFA), Inspirit (INSP), Collagen (COS), MySquar (MYSQ) and Frontera (FRR). And there may be major news on Air Partner (AIR) soon, I seem to have found a whistleblower. Happy days. If you like bearcasts then remember that at UK Investor on April 21 one of many highlights will be a live bearcast with myself and Paul Scott. Make sure you book a free ticket HERE using the promotional code WINNIFRITH.

Yesterday AIM-listed Advanced Oncotherapy (AVO) announced that the Long Stop Date for the completion of a Distribution Agreement with Yantai Cipu, already extended to 31 March, had been exceeded but discussions were continuing. This deal also involves the payment of £16.5 million to Advanced and it seems the cash is yet to arrive – indeed I wonder if the £13.5 million subscription cash arrived. That in turn leaves me wondering, yet again, what the cash position at Advanced is – and what about the £5.5 million Blackfinch loan which should have been repaid at the end of March (and is secured)? Are the wheels coming off the white knight rescue? Surely a full statement is needed?

In January Topps Tiles (TPT) stated “an encouraging start to the new financial year with like-for-like sales in Q1 up by 3.4%”. Today a further Trading Update…

There are two jokes that I like about the advertising industry. The first is that it is one industry where the assets leave the office every evening and the second is that only half of all advertising works...it is just unclear which half that is. More recently though there has been a third joke...and that's the WPP (WPP) share price performance.

As you know I care greatly about the way meaningless data is misinterpreted when it comes to the gender pay gap. That got me into an Orwellian soup thanks to a bedwetting millennial when I gave THIS lecture at Bath Spa University. Today is the day by when all companies must publish gender pay data. But the data offered is utterly meaningless and the fact that Theresa May uses it as she jumps on the bandwagon show what a silly woman she is. The BBC is wilfully misreporting it too as you can see below ref RyanAir (RYA). I explain why today's wall to wall coverage is so misleading.

On 14 March following pressure on this website Conviviality (CVR) announced it was scrapping its £8.2 million interim dividend due two days later as it struggled for cash. 15 days later the company had failed to raise £125 million and headed towards administration with shareholders set to lose everything. But I have been passed bank accounts which, as you can see below,  demonstrate that some shareholders were in fact paid a dividend.

Hello Share Masters. At the big UK Investor Show last time, Uncle Tom launched a big demo on stage to see if one brand of tonic water was better than the more common kind. I think he may have been surprised when all but one of the audience he dragged up voted that Fevertree (FEVR) tonic water tasted better than the other brand on offer.

No! Not Neil Woodford silly! The data about who is the UK's top fund manager is very clear and unless you hold the charts upside down it certainly is not Woodford. The hard data shows that Mark Slater was not only the 3rd best performing UK fund manager last year but over ten years is No 1. Facts don't lie - Slater, like his late father Jim - is just incredibly good at stock picking.

No! This is not an April's fool. Many of our team have been incredibly critical of Milestone (MSG) for several years. It has been the sort of lifestyle/joke company that has given the AIM Casino such a bad name and that is why you can buy its shares for just 0.13p. We admit that this is high risk but try to look through the front windscreen not into the rear view mirror.

Previously writing on hobby products company Hornby (HRN) it was results, ‘new strategy’ & fundraising - the latter at the prior closing share price of 29.5p. Though, also noting trading including “softer market demand over the summer months and increased competition in the important UK Independent channel”, I concluded that I’d continue to monitor but avoided the shares. Today a Trading Statement announcement…

Shareholders saw fit to reward Musk the largest CEO pay package in the history of the world. This is precisely the type of behaviour that is only seen during periods of extreme irrationality when financial markets are at their peak… and poised for a serious correction.

Via, his PR man - aka the spawn of Satan - I have sent a letter to Eric Schaer the CEO of AIM superfraud MySquar (MYSQ) challenging him to deal in person, face to face with me, on April 21, with the incontrovertible evidence that his company is a fraud.  I write:

As you know I regard much of the discussion on the gender pay gap as absurd with data misused by many - something that landed me in the soup at Bath Spa University in a most Orwellian way.  The most excellent Kate Andrews of the IEA has just produced a stunning report taking this discussion one and once again bases her superb work on hard data.

Only kidding! Death Wish, which is not, as you might think, hapless Mayor Khan's new tourist promo video for London, is not out until Friday. So I gave the Mrs a far more suitable present for her birthday but what to give my Labour party loyalist sister Comrade N?. Back to the Mrs: I sense that I shall be watching the new Bruce Willis movie alone. I digress. In today's bearcast I look at Weatherley International (WTI), the fraud MySquar (MYSQ), Pathfinder Minerals (PFP),  Air Partner (AIR), Sosandar (SOS), IFG Group (IFP), IQE (IQE) - where I try not to be tasteless as I flag a difficult issue but apologise in advance if I offend anyone - and Purplebricks (PURP). If you like bearcasts then remember that at UK Investor on April 21 one of many highlights will be a live bearcast with myself and Paul Scott. Make sure you book a free ticket HERE using the promotional code WINNIFRITH

Eric Muschinski is an ex broker and hedge fund player who for seven years has penned the “Gold Investment Letter” so this call in the latest podcast from Palisade Capital may be seen as talking his own book but it is argued along rational lines.