At 4.18pm on Friday AIM-listed Rurelec (RUR) issued an Update – Energia del Sur, S.A. Judging by the timing of the announcement (more-or-less no-one-is-watching o’clock) it wasn’t going to be good news. 

Early this year we showed the ten top shorted London-listed shares at the start of 2017. Previously updating it was the Carillion crashing edition. How's the performance now?...

Old Lawson may still be pursuing a ridiculous claim against me for libel, he noted this week that he had another meeting with his lawyers, but credit where credit is due, the old fool has nailed the shambles last week at Barclays (BARC) stockbrokers perfectly. And in a posting on the ShareSoc blog he gives advice on what to do if you have been jerked around.  This is an example of the good work he can do when he is not distracted by falling in love with companies such as Globo. Over to Lawson:

If you forgive me I start with long conversations with my father about World War Two and the early fifties, his father, his mother's godfather's son (hanged as a Nazi) and other matters all prompted by watching an episode of Foyle's war last night. You need to have these chats while you still can and I thought they were interesting. We move on to why my father thinks he is Shipston's Buffett - yes the UK residential property bubble and we see yet more signs of utter madness from the FCA on this score. Martin Fagan, all those years ago, you were bang on the money. 

The BNN Technology (BNN) fiasco is rather a depressing reminder that it takes an event such as the resignation of a CFO, accompanied by some serious whistleblowing for NOMADs and AIM regulation to act, by which time it is invariably too late for the retail investor. This is largely because the system is inherently flawed in that NOMADs are paid by the very people that they are supposed to be vetting. This is why AIM is stuffed with BNNs ticking away like time bombs.

Neil Woodford's fund management group has spent vast sums advertising its products in the financial press and has received vast amounts of slavishly positive comment in the same publications. These two facts are, of course, in no way related. And so after Woodford said sorry, in a terribly unconvincing manner, for having done so badly over the past year how does the Mail on Sunday's Alex Sebastian, himself a unit holder, spin this? With fake news natch

Well here we are a few weeks short of the anniversary of the creation of out Septic Seven stocks which we had Red Flagged but were at the time still trading on AIM. Marcus Stuttard, the sham sheriff and head of AIM, obviously had complete faith in the regulatory setup of the Casino which is why this portfolio was set up. After all, if he is completely happy with the regulation of AIM (for which he is responsible), he should be happy to pony up his cash in out basket of diversified stocks. We might consider all members of the portfolio as littered with Red Flags, but obviously he doesn’t and therefore some of the joke PEs are highly attractive.

An evil PR spinner has had words with underperforming fund manager Neil "Nomates" Woodford, aka the most arrogant bastard in the City. Until now the line was "I am right the market is wrong, its business as normal." Now Nomates has recorded a video in which he says that he is sorry for the underperformance of his funds. Perhaps it is the fact that he has seen folks yank a net £350 million out of his £10 billion CF Woodford Equity Income fund in recent weeks that has caused the contrition. If redemptions continue on that scale, Woodford will be forced into some hurried share sales which will only compound his woes. The trouble it that Woodford patently does not feel sorry.

Tom has returned from his sabbactical and the stats speak for themselves: you people like Bearcasts. I can only imagine the plight of our readers for the past five months, fetal position on the floor, listerning to a skipping Victorola or the snow of an untuned wireless waiting for the return of Bearcast.

The rise of exchange traded funds (ETFs) is one of the more interesting topics in light of the ongoing general equity bull market. For the first time in history there are more indexes than stocks! Hence, the rising popularity of ETFs (which track indexed strategies) comes as no surprise. But could this be the cause of the next stockmarket crash? That is the thesis of Kenton Toews of Sprott who writes:

Just post its year ended 31^st August, Character Group (CCT) said that it was pleased to announce its appointment as “the master toy distributor in United Kingdom and Ireland for the globally popular Pokémon brand”…

Regular readers will know that I am not the greatest unadulterated fan of Beaufort Securities. And thus when I saw an email it sent out on Friday to clients, for a moment I read the worst for it. Au contraire.

From the FCA's spreadsheet of short positions required to be disclosed to it, the following shows the shorted AIM shares with positions from 2016 and thus far in 2017 (by net short position %) - and if this position has increased (red), reduced (green) or remained unchanged (black) since last week...

Adrian Day is, like me, an Austrian when it comes to economics and that is why, in this period of monetary lunacy and fiscal recklessness, gold has such an attraction for him. He is very bullish indeed. He argues that this year we've seen gold swing up and down several times, each time we have gone higher and had higher lows. This is a bullish pattern. It’s extremely encouraging that gold has held up well above 1300. Central banks are going to be very cautious from here.

When ths share tip went out yesterday on Fivefreesharetips.com the shares were 67 offer. They are now 71p offer but still cheap. But to make sure you get in first ister now for FREE ahead of the next hot share tip at Fivefreesharetips.com HERE. Now to why Sanderson (SND) shares are still cheap...

UK Oil & Gas (UKOG) nutter Michael Boyle wants to trap me and report me to the FCA. What a prize poltroon. Andrew Bell has been selling lots of UK Oil & Gas shares but - with millions still on the book - tries to argue that they are cheap. Hmmm. I have a second  maths lesson for my friend Mr Bell following on from this one yesterday. Then it is onto my old friend the offshore based asset stripper Jim Mellon and one of the many dogs in his stable, the related party snakefest that is FastForward (FFWD). Clearly it is placing ahoy as the company has zero cash and grotesque PLC costs but I explain why the shares, at 9.5p, are monstrously overvalued - fair value is sub 5p. Sorry Jim.

Hello, Share Tasters. A famous bear who writes on this splendid website recently opined that a company with a crazily over-egged valuation can continue to grow its crazy valuation. This sounds like a ridiculous observation. Why should a share which is already far too pricey become even pricier?

Hardly a day goes by on AIM without some complete piece of junk being pumped up to some crazy share price level, and it often happens as a result of private investors failing to actually read RNSs properly and understand what they mean. Today has been the turn of failing IT company CSF Group (CSFG).

Nanoco (NANO), describing itself as “a world leader in the development and manufacture of cadmium-free quantum dots and other nanomaterials”, has announced a “Commercial Supply and License Agreement”. Oooh, “commercial” hey – what’s the detail?...

Hopefully my warnings were heeded – on the previous update on trading from Safestyle UK (SFE) I concluded the announcement and continuing outlook saw me continue to remain bearish. Now there’s a further “Trading Update” including “we now expect full year 2017 group revenues to be flat year on year. At the same time, our efforts to drive order intake are incurring additional costs, thereby adversely affecting the group's margin performance, and leading to a material impact on full year profits”. Uh oh…