UK 01:27 Thursday, 8 October 2026
Breaking news and expert analysis on fast-moving AIM and LSE listed shares
Investment is a credibility and confidence game. And part of this game is admitting that sometimes (actually quite often) you are wrong on shares. But as always it is how you react that matters and with psychology being an important driver of share prices in the shorter-term, trying to work out what the average investor is thinking is part of the game.
Undoubtedly you have read in the press that embattled retailer Marks & Spencer (MKS) has just lost its fourth clothing chief in a decade. Apparently it is something to do with a lack of skinny jeans availability. Whatever...but it goes to show that M&S is still struggling to find its place in the modern day clothing retail market. Perhaps even more intriguingly Jill McDonald is going to be temporarily replaced by Steve Rowe, the current CEO of M&S...and ex-head of clothing. I cannot remember it doing that much better under his tenure...
Early this year we showed the top shorted London-listed shares at the start of 2019. How's the performance at the late May bank holiday? (those in bold remain from 2018)...
Well a year has passed since I wrote on these pages that:
I noted two different hope cycles in the weekend press commentary. The first is a short term one based on the plethora of retail sector numbers that will be published over the next week or two. The headline that caught my attention was 'M&S’s (MKS) lifeline from last-minute spending spree' which seemed to be a straight extrapolation from the Next (NXT) numbers, which I wrote up last week.
What blue chips do the "professional" share tipsters like and should we care?
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What to make of events at Marks & Spencer (MKS) over the last 24 hours? I last wrote on the embattled retailer back in July last year, concluding back then that:
Hello, Share Puzzlers. What do you think might be the results of Marks & Spencer (MKS) for the second quarter of its year? If you are a long-time holder, you will not be very excited. I first bought this share at least 20 years ago. It was 300p a throw, quite a lot of money, then. Yet despite a huge devaluation of the pound and inflation the share is still only 349p today.
The macro news today showed a glimmer of hope for retailers with the UK British Retail Consortium (BRC) data showing a 1.2% rise in June like-for-like retail sales compared to a year ago. All hail the hot weather and the Eid celebrations which apparently - according to the experts - helped out.
