I have received a number of comments about yesterday's Bearcast. I address some of those cultists, speaking out from the last redoubt.  Then, prompted by Three Brains, I look at what a PE of 5 means as a guide to value, and why it can so often mean nothing at all.

Seven months ago, I wondered if Halfords Group (HFD) - the “largest retailer of motoring and cycling products... in the United Kingdom” - was a potential bad-day buy.  Since then, the stock has halved! Have we hit the bad-day buy level, or not?

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? 
 

Grab a cup of tea, sit back, and test your knowledge against the other ShareProphets members. Write your score in the comments, there are no prizes, and most important of all – no Googling!

These are the most-read articles and most listened-to Bearcasts of the week. The most read non-Tom article is Ariana Resources – News Soon To Add Value? You bet! BUY by Nigel Somerville at number six or number 12 if you include Bearcasts.

Ahead of that, I describe triumph in the garden. Then, I discuss the accelerating Bitcoin crash, Argo Blockchain (ARB) and Cineworld (CINE).

Wishbone Gold (WSBN) has announced initial samples from the current Wishbone II project in Northern Queensland, Australia. It states that the drilling “confirm[s] the presence of elevated copper, coincident with visible oxidised copper and primary chalcopyrite mineralisation… logging of the Reverse Circulation chips confirms the presence of a felsic, high level, crowded porphyry intrusion often found associated with productive, high-level gold systems in the Ravenswood-Charters Towers district, such as at Mt Wright and Mt Leyshon”. This sounds encouraging.

Bitcoin is crashing once again, and now trades well below $19,000. According to Peter Schiff, the charts point to $10,000 as the next stop. Therefore, shares in Argo Blockchain (ARB) should be suspended first thing Monday; here is why.

Gold finished this week at $1840 – down from last week’s $1872, but a good recovery from the drop to test $1810 in the wake of the Fed’s rush of blood in raising interest rates this week by 0.75%, accompanied by the suggestion that we could be in for the same again at the next meeting. The Fed wants us all to know that it is taking inflation very seriously. Very seriously indeed.

Analyst, Charles Nenner, believes it is too late to make your portfolio defensive, as things will worsen across the board.

For millions of our fellow citizens, the tough choices every day are whether to feed the kids or to pay the fuel bill. Or whether to make do with shoes with holes in them or trousers with holes in them. But for some, like banksters from London with second homes ( pricing out local young folks) in Cornwall, there are other tough choices. If folks in the City wonder why they are so despised, perhaps the tweet below reminding us all of bankster "tough choices" might be a clue. welcome to a great advert for a windfall tax on investment banksters.

Hello Share Trekkers. As Mr Rising Price is really beginning to bite now, it’s timely to look at ways people are cutting their spending. Because increased economising will obviously affect the profits, and hence the share prices, of some companies. But not others. Here are some sectors which you might want to avoid, at least pro tem.

I start with why I was up until 2 AM last night, as discussed HERE. Then, it is on to the fraud, Supply@ME Capital (SYME); M & C Saatchi (SAA); Next Fifteen (NFC); and finally, that golden rule and Westminster Group (WSG).

I see that shares in AIM-listed online purveyor of ladies wear Sosandar (SOS) have dropped – down by 0.5p today, to 20p and down from 22p at the start of play yesterday. But there has been no news, so why the shedding of around 10% of its value? The answer is, of course, news from rivals Asos (ASC) and Boohoo (BOO).

Before calling his lawyer, the pompous and bombastic arse should remember how, in the early stages of Avanti Communications (AVN), he boasted of fabricating a product demo. Worse was to come, as Williams made tens of millions from dumping shares he ramped ruthlessly, while investors lost everything.  Now, he has a new scam: Arqit Quantum (US: ARQQ), listed on Nasdaq. We first covered Arqit, HERE. Its shares were $37.41 on December 3, 2021; now, they are just $5.65. Bring on the lawyers.

About three months ago, I noted that, before I bought back into the shares, I needed to see a >10% fall in the then c. 265p Tesco (TSCO) share price. We are not there yet, given this morning's 248p price, but what did its Q1 update say about the tricky path ahead?

Recently, a poster has appeared in railway stations, showing a young man in handcuffs with the legend ‘no excuse for abuse’. It’s aimed at fare dodgers, who are mostly young men and women, and is a clear threat: 'don’t pay your fare and you could go to jail’.

Earlier, I exposed numerous red flags concerning a) 2021 revenues and b) the Tradeflow deal; now, I turn to Supply's (SYME) accounting blunders from calendar 2021. Of course, the company is no stranger to accounting blunders, including:

Just a few caveats. Align Research is paid to pump out the research below. Align and its boss, Richard "nobody likes me and I don't care" Jennings own shed loads of shares in Bluebird Merchant Ventures (BMV), and the "analyst" is disgraced, journalist smearing, part time PR man, the vile and repellent Dr Michael Green. Dr Green should not be allowed to work in financial services after his crimes as an enabler of the fraud Sefton Resources (SER). Having said all of that, I too have an interest in these shares and reckon they are cheap. Are they worth 9.58p as the ludicrous Green suggests? Er no. But could they double? Yes. And the note below explains why.

Earlier, I exposed numerous red flags regarding Supply@ME Capital (SYME) revenues. I now turn to the lossmaking, sub-scale asset manager, Tradeflow, purchased in a smoke-and-mirrors deal on July 1 2021. Again, brace yourselves; this is ugly.