Hello, Share Takers. You may agree with me that now Covid is in retreat many companies with household names should recover pre-pandemic momentum and probably do a lot better in the next few years. Now you can either invest in these companies or you can buy shares in an outfit which serves many of those famous British brands. I’m thinking of a promising set-up called LondonMetric Property (LMP). It rents out premises to big companies.

Another week goes by and Gold is testing the nerves: having bounced between $1750 and $1830 or thereabouts over the past three months, this week the direction of travel has been lower and the price closed the week at $1751. Worse still, we have seen a series of lower highs.

It is a good debate whether the weekend is the start of the week or the end of the week.  Given a choice I would say the latter and – reflecting this – it is time to play a bit of catch up on three stocks I have mentioned before.  

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? 
 

Remember Drive Software? This was, according to Julie” lingerie on expenses” Meyer, going to be Tesla meets Fitbit. More like British Leyland meets Enron. Accounts for the year to March 31 2021 are out and are a car crash. 

I’m doing something different with the Sunday Pub Quiz this week. In each edition of Private Eye, they publish the Dumb Britain column which features the stupidest answers uttered by quiz show contestants. This week, you can prove yourself smarter than Dumb Britain. All questions are from recent editions if Private Eye. And still, no Googling! 

The top non-Tom article this week is Union Jack Oil – I have lost faith by Peter Brailey at number 2 or number 7 if you include the Bearcast.

I start with how I am terrorising folks in this hotel as I sneeze in the lift and droplets fall from my ever redder nose. I know I don’t have covid, they don’t. Then I move onto Malcolm Stacey and inflation. Then onto Bidstack (BIDS), a train crash in the making. Then I discuss the lorry driver and cabbage picker crisis with a joke at Jim’s expense and also what is the obvious solution.

Two or three weeks ago I clambered off the fence and explicitly told you to short Eurasia Mining (EUA) at 28p. The shares are now 23.6p in the middle. So far so good for we bears but the company is still valued by the market, on a fully diluted basis as there are loads of in the money options, at well over £700 million which is insane. A placing announced yesterday is the cue to add to your shorts.

AIM-listed jam-tomorrow IoT investment company Tern plc (TERN) has a history of not keeping its own investors abreast of what is going on going almost all the way back to when Tern was formed out of the wreckage that was Silvermere Energy back in 2013. An eight year history of deceiving investors?

The Quoth the Raven podcast host Chris Irons is a man who believes in sound money and bad language so he must be a good bloke. Chris reckons that everything in the markets is rigged and the biggest rigger is the Fed. He says that the Fed’s main function today seems to be preventing market corrections. This is causing numerous issues along with making most people complacent.

Miner in Azerbaijan, Anglo Asian Mining (AAZ) has announced results for the first half of 2021 and that “FY 2021 Production guidance of between 64,000 to 72,000 gold equivalent ounces remains unchanged”.

I commented on Tuesday that Acquis-listed Rutherford Health (RUTH) seems to be having a bit of a problem collecting the placing proceeds originally announced at the end of August. The original payment day – September 13^th – came and went, with an after-hours announcement that the deadline had been extended to September 23^rd – yesterday. There was no announcement yesterday, but at 11.57am – ie lunchtime – today the company announced the grisly news:

Metals Exploration (MTL) has announced results for the first half of 2021 showing it generating cash and that access to further resource is being developed.

Hello, Share Thrashers. There’s some worry about the rising rate of inflation. But how does that thorny issue affect our shares? Many folks, including some expert in the field, reckon inflation is a bad thing for the stock market. And certainly, when the government publishes a high inflation notice, the Footsie nearly always falls, often quite heavily. While hefty inflation is probably keeping shares back even though there are some signals, like the weakening of covid, which should be sending stocks higher.

I discuss the Mrs and I both taking tests this morning as we both feel a bit under the weather. Then I look in detail at Chill Brands (CHLL) where the risk-reward of holding until next Thursday is surely terribly unattractive and at Tern (TERN) accounting for Geeks, what is being hidden and why that makes this such a sell and also at Argo Blockchain (ARB).

On listing on AIM in March I concluded on online womenswear group In The Style (ITS), listing at the “top of the valuation range” price was 200p per share, to capitalise the group at £105 million. With that and concern on the sustainability of recent performance; the noted selling shareholders having likewise and hence their selling now?, I certainly currently avoid. I concluded similarly cautiously more recently with the shares at 226p. Today an AGM trading update – and the shares currently down to 165p!

Touchstone Exploration (TXP) is a company that I’ve covered here several times before and which I believe has a lot of potential, and the latest drill results certainly seem to support that still being the case.

In today’s RNS, Tintra (TNT) announced a conversion of £50,000 of its convertible loan stock into 500,000 ordinary shares of 1 pence each at a price of 10 pence per Ordinary Share plus a couple of other transactions. The most significant event was the following:

How many Reckitt (RKT) products have you used this year? I would image we all have at least used one out of the antiseptic brand Dettol, the analgesic Disprin, the sore throat medicine Strepsils, the hair removal brand Veet, the immune support supplement Airborne, the indigestion remedy Gaviscon, the baby food brand Mead Johnson, the air freshener Air Wick or Calgon, Clearasil, Cillit Bang, Durex, Lysol, Mycil, Enfamil, Nutramigen and Vanish.  I first bought the stock just shy of £60 a share earlier this year and then  as discussed here in late July  doubled my position after a share price fall.  Currently I am sitting at a small overall profit and have picked up some dividends on the way but how do I feel about the 96 page ‘delivering sustainable growth’ presentation yesterday?