Roger Lawson of ShareSoc sent me a present the other day. Nope, not another lawyer’s letter but a copy of his new book “Business Perspective Investing… And why financial numbers are not important when picking shares.” A snappy title if ever there was one. I do think numbers matter but it is not a bad read. To demonstrate what he means, Mr Lawson has listed 17 reasons why he does NOT want to own or buy shares in Burford (BUR) and it is nothing to do with the Muddy Waters affair. The 17 reasons Neil Woodford ignored are:

In today's podcast I discuss the ominous silence from Brady (BRY), dare to disagree with Chris "three brains" Bailey on SIG (SHI), look at Bidstack (BIDS) and consider the, incomplete, Q3 trading statement from Audioboom (BOOM), pondering when its next bailout placing will be.

Previously writing on Time Out Group (TMO), last month I noted balance sheet deterioration after interims showing net revenue only 10% higher than in the corresponding 2018 period to £24.7 million, a little changed attributable loss of £11.4 million and £16.6 million of net investing spending more than depreciation + amortisation and concluded, with the shares at around 128p, I still think Woodford - albeit eventually, for the wrong reason and at a lower price! - was correct to sell. Now “Proposed Placing”…

I am indebted to Pierotlunaire for his post over the weekend on my piece Woodford Dog BenevolentAI: as predicted......but it is good news really! for the paperwork for Temasek’s investment into this cash-hungry dog has arrived at Companies House and as expected Temasek has take its pound of flesh.

The “good news” for Neil Woodford was that BenevolentAI had managed to attract an investment of $90 million from Temasek. The valuation of BenevolentAI was hit for six, dropping to around $1 billion (from $2 billion) but the other piece of good(ish) news for Neil was that this would drop his unquoted investments held in his Equity Income Fund, which was at the time well over its limit of 10% of the fund – partially because the dodgy Guernsey listings had been scrapped. But of course it also meant that book value of his investments in BenevolentAI had halved at the stroke of a pen.

My comrade Evil Banksta has today exposed how AIM listed Bulletin Board darling Bidstack (BIDS) has misled investors and is also clearly sitting on a lack of profits and sales warning. For the former naughtiness the FCA should open an enquiry at once into possible market abuse, for the latter AIM regulation must force a statement. Being a fine upstanding citizen I have today written to the regulators. My missive follows:

I last wrote about the 'leading European supplier of building materials' SIG (SHI) back in early July, observing that it was failing to cost-cut its way to growth due to the business being operationally/economically geared. Well the latter points are very obvious today with a trading update which notes a 'deterioration in trading conditions has accelerated over recent weeks, and political and macro-economic uncertainty has continued to increase'. Oh dear...but today's 22% share price fall has pushed the shares below 100 pence...

If you are going to “ride this bull,” make sure you do it with a strategy in place... for when, not if, you get thrown...

As Andrew Monk of VSA, rightly, says in his morning email, Shareprophets and I do not need defending but he does so anyway. Punters are pissed off that we reveal placings such as that of Reabold (RBD) last week. Would they honestly prefer that companies just ramped shares via ramptastic RNS's and podcasts with Justin the Clown so they overpaid in the secondary market ahead of a discounted placing to City insiders and spivs? Really? Do my critcs really enjoy such financial flaggelation so others can prosper?  Anyhow Monk goes on thus: 

Let us be clear: bulletin board darling Bidstack (BIDS) has flouted AIM rules, it sitting on a profits warning & is grossly overvalued.

Hello, share trippers. It’s not been long since I discussed BT (BT.) on this upstanding website. However, the shares have been rising lately and, as a lot of us are in this stock for its hefty dividend, it’s perhaps appropriate to review the chances of a still chirpier price...

Almost but not yet. Pro tem I look at the ethics and tax affairs of soon to float AirNb and then at this week's utterly dishonest journalism in the Sunday Times, Burford (BUR) and the issue of revenue recognition.

MPs and the FCA seem happy that London & Capital Finance, which we have done so much to expose, is a one off fraud. Of course it is not, it is part of a much larger mini-bond scandal. Hundreds of thousands of vulnerable savers will face ruin and our leaders and regulators are asleep at the wheel. In fact LCF is one of a number of such schemes to go pop. The next big one to topple will, be….

This has nothing to do with shares or investing or anything. It's the end of the weekend and we've organised a quick pub quiz. Grab your own beer, there are no prizes, and for Pete's sake, no Googling! Only I get to do that. If you are so inclined, please enter your score in the comments. The highest score still won't get a prize.

My views on Block Energy (BLOE) in recent months haven’t exactly been popular amongst shareholders, but unfortunately much of what I feared in relation its operations is now playing out and I feel that investors have been deceived by the company. I have been utterly vindicated. It will get worse for thise who ignore my latest warning.

Is there anything better than sitting back and reading a well-written article on a lazy Sunday? Every week ShareProphets features some long form journalism that you'll find of interest. Grab your cuppa and enjoy these five articles. 

Last week one of the highlights for me was the shadow of incompetence spreading at Neil's Woodford Patient Capital Trust (WPCT) as it tried to reassure the market with the appointment of Raymond Abbott to its board. What Susan Searle, the Chair of WPCT, would have hoped is that the appointment of Mr Abbott would be seen as a safe pair of hands. Naturally she will have done her homework, which is why the original RNS of Monday had to be corrected, after my prompt,  as it mis-named one of Mr Abbot’s previous appointments and missed another off altogether. But is Mr Abbott a safe pair of hands or butterfingers?

My slam-dunk sells for 2019 are looking better and better (if you are a bear). In my last piece (in September) the average had got almost back to flat but the interim results season took its toll on one of the portfolio and I am now in profit.

Tom has been doing Bearcast for something like five years now, and the ShareProphets Radio Show is going gangbusters. What I need to know is how do you listen to them?

Yesterday the FTSE All-Share (Neil Woodford’s benchmark for his Equity Income and Income Focus unit trusts) staged a little bit of a recovery and put on 1% - not that it helped the Woodford funds, which only put on 0.27% and 0.18% in NAV per unit respectively, according to Morningstar.