Evil Knievil: Grizzly rattling the tin

The results for Scholium (LON:SCHO) emerged last week. There was a small loss but clear signs of improvement. This leads to the possibility of a dividend. There is no interest in the stock and tnav is c. 73p in contrast to the current offer of 45p. For the patient.

I still think Bernard Shapero should be on the board. Otherwise there is the suspicion that somehow some duty of care owed to shareholders is being avoided.

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Neil Woodford has sold c. £1m of Woodford Patient Capital Trust (LON:WPCT) at around the 52p level. He says that he needed to fund the payment of a tax bill. Of course, he might also have decided that he needed to avoid sitting on a valueless investment. It is hard to borrow stock.

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My nephew, who is a successful fund manager in California, is over here at a family gathering in Penzance. He is no doubt practising to be a pirate. However, space being what it is, he is sleeping in a tent. I said that I would find that very uncomfortable (he is a millionaire with a bit left over). But he points out to me that in California he does not do it since grizzlies prowl along, 800 lbs a time, who can rip the tops of cars if they fancy there is some food to hand (this means that food for the campers has to be stuck in a bag and hauled up to hang from a tree). Also snakes such as rattlers can come along. Land of the free? Land of the barmy more like it.

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My nephew’s wife has earned six figure sums as an author. Lately Amazon have reduced royalty payments since the books are distributed by Kindle and therefore Amazon know if a reader has read only one third of the book. This state of affairs leads Amazon to pay just one third of the royalties. Well, that’s commerce for you.

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Finally, the Remainers are still hard at it. The Welsh sheep farmers fear a 42% tariff barrier for their lambs sold into Continental Europe. HMG has already indicated that it will make good such vengeful behaviour by the EU. But HMG cannot stress this since it only invites Barnier to be extra silly.

Equally, on Channel 4 news last night they paraded a capital markets expert from the FT to comment on sterling. However, C4 declined to stress that the FT is, as it has always been, dedicated to Remaining. It makes a difference.

Fortunately, we have a new government in Downing Street that will not tolerate this garbage.