Something a little different this morning and that is another quick look at the AIM market-listed Abcam (ABC), which I last wrote about back in March. Back then I concluded about the "pretty fascinating company making, sourcing and selling a range of 'highly validated biological binders and assays to help study the important targets in critical biological pathways'" that:

Britain’s constitutional crisis has hit before the next great spasm of Europe’s intractable monetary crisis. But they are in close competition. The eurozone faces a category five economic storm. It is structurally defenceless as the world slides into recession. This will not be an ordinary downturn because central banks no longer have the instruments to fight it. If there is an October election in the UK - and if it delivers a bigger Tory majority as polls suggest - EU leaders will have to decide whether to risk adding the shock of a no-deal Brexit to all the other shocks hitting their industries...

Hello, Share Bunnies. A famous high street store with a fine tradition is the bicycle king Halfords (HFD). It also does healthy items like camping gear, electric bikes and kids’ scooters. So it’s with some sadness that I am still avoiding the shares. And that’s mainly because the situation facing our big retail chains is just not getting any better. Sir Philip Green’s empire has just reported big losses, for example...

Cabot Energy (CAB) suddenly seems to have become very popular for such a small AIM oil company, and given the recent news on a forthcoming discounted fundraise, I’m surprised that people are paying a huge premium to that.

I have already covered the laughable claim made by Watchstone (WTG), Quindell as was, against Slater & Gordon (SGH). Watchstone has made great hay about the conterclaim which ithe gophers of the deadwood press have swallowed hook, ine and sinker. But the actual court papers, below, are damning for Watchstone/Quindell. 

This has nothing to do with Woodford of Burford or Rob Terry 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 Googleing!

The Sunday Times has a major expose on St James Place (SJP) based on testimony of an ex employee. It is truly shocking stuff although not shocking for me as St James pursued my late Uncle Chris very aggressively. What this firm does to screw clients and to reward staff who shaft those clients is repellent and shames capitalism. I hope the firm goes bust and its workers never work again. and it may happen...

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. 

Once upon a time I had shares in Edge Performance VCT over several classes of share. It proved a disaster, and I sold out at a loss. I did cover some of the problems (see HERE) some time ago, but it seems that the shit show has continued ever since. On 29^th August the shareholders decided enough was enough at the AGM, booting out three of the board and the auditor. This leaves the company with just one director – I believe company law is that it must have two as a fully listed plc, but the shares have not been suspended, nor has there been any announcement of an interim appointment.

I've broken up these lists into articles and Bearcasts for the past year so readers can get a more rounded sense of what is popular each week. But I think that I need to show you the actual, merged, top 11 for this week.

In today's podcast I look at the latest news from AIM bad boy Management Resoiurce Solutions (MRS)  where I think my critics really do owe me an apology (again). Then at Neil Woodford's latest woes at the Woodford Patient Capital Trust (WPCT) which are the beginning of the end. Will I get to monster the board at an AGM in 2020 as I did this year? I fear I may be denied that entertainment.

AIM Cesspit Posterboy Management Resource Solutions (MRS) served up another dollop of comedy on Friday. On Thursday it had waited until someone had had plenty of time to dump shares with the price tonking, before suspending its shares because of bad news it has known about well before the UK market opened. That news was that Voluntary Administrators had been appointed to 5 Australian subsidiaries. Now we learn more…

Neil Woodford’s benchmark for his Equity Income Fund (WEIF) and Income Focus Fund (WIFF) put on 0.19% yesterday. For the second day in a row WIFF and WEIF both beat that, putting on 0.69% and 0.40% in NAV per unit respectively. Meanwhile, Neil has been selling more Norwegian Dog Thin Film (THIN), dropping his holding to 9.86% as announced at no-one-is-watching o’clock last night (at quarter to five) as the company continues to hurtle towards the corporate undertakers or an eye-watering dilution if a rescue refinancing can be arranged.

By convention the speaker of the house of commons, standing as an independent, is returned unopposed by the major parties. But John Bercow is a divisive fellow.

“Xpediator, (AIM: XPD), a leading provider of freight management services across the UK and Central and Eastern Europe announces that Stuart Howard will be stepping down from the board… in order to pursue other business interests… thank Stuart for the good work he has done particularly in terms of strengthening key functions across the business”. So an orderly departure and transition for this role then?...

Neil Woodford’s favourite revolutionary (geddit?) washing machine outfit, AIM-listed Xeros announced some apparently good news this morning. I say apparently – it is a licensing deal for its washing machine technology but came with absolutely no financials whatsoever. What is the point of that? I thought RNSs were supposed to inform. But in this case I suggest it is not so much to inform as to ramp the shares up as the company tries to get a bailout funding away. I suspect the more important announcement was the one that came later in the morning, at 11.06 am, announcing that interims to June will be released on 19 September – a week next Thursday. I’ll mark that one in the diary…….

From the FCA's spreadsheet of short positions required to be disclosed to it, the following shows the shorted AIM shares with positions from 2018 and thus far in 2019 (by net short position %, those in bold not on the list at the start of 2019) – and if this position has increased (red), reduced (green) or remained unchanged (black) since last week...

Hello Share Feelers. You'll have noticed tht the Dow is once again tickling all-time highs. This is odd, given that the trde war with China shows little sign of cooling down. However, the big American traders have always had more optimism in their genes than their UK counterparts. The health of American shares may also have something to do with US traders prefering to invest in their home grown stock rather than risk it with Brexit-torn Blighty and indeed with the rest of a beleaguered Europe

In February we banked big profits on Ariana Resources (AAU) with the shares at around 2p, noting longer-term risk/reward still looked favourable including the macro backdrop seeing us bullish on the gold price but that it had met our short-term purposes. The gold price was then just over $1,300 per ounce and is currently comfortably above $1,500 per ounce yet the shares are available to buy at still 2.3p – and so…