Jim Slater has died, aged 86. I revelled in his friendship. A few years ago, the BBC featured a rather lurid documentary claiming that a number of financiers regularly gathered at The Clermont Club in a private dining room to organise the finances of British industry and commerce to suit themselves. This was nonsense as…
As ever, trying to judge what is going on inside a company from the utterances of John Walmsley is completely impossible. But I am not selling Pantheon (PANR). Now 90p. Anyway he and Ignacio Salazar of Orosur (OMI) were round here yesterday afternoon – John is also of course chairman of OMI. My difficulty is…
My wife and I lived in central Africa for four years and thus encountered the statistic that not hundreds but many thousands of lives of young African children are lost each year due to snake bites. This does not surprise since the fact is that the puff adder and the Gaboon viper, to name but…
The chairman draws my attention to the SunTimes article on Just Eat (JE.). This now stands at 425p or so and is on a prospective PE of 80 for 2015. Tnav is nothing about which to write home. So it is all in the earnings story. Forget that one of its big backers, Index Ventures,…
I am indebted to Saturday’s DTel for any facts that here follow. However, a James Alan Craig of Dunragit, Scotland pretended to be Muddy Waters Research through coming up with @Mudd1Waters. This is a really subtle deception device whose only fault is that it supposes that there are some cretins to hand to be taken…
I had slightly decided not to say anything about Plethora (PLE) and the bid since the chairman owns 29% of PLE and is the controlling luminary at Regent Pacific, whose number on the HKSE is 575. This modesty was partly occasioned by my ignorance but principally because the chairman also controls this site. However, I…
I am a glutton for punishment when it comes to resource stocks. So when a voice comes on this morning pointing me in the direction of Berkeley Energy (BKY), putative uranium producer, chaired by my neighbour Paul Atherley, I am drawn as a moth to a candle. However, the RNS is explicit in advising that…
Get off the pot: Was Shakoor, who is right on these matters, declares that African Potash (AFPO) is absurdly overpriced at 2p. When I collared him last Friday evening he could not go into detail since he was on his way to football practice (I quite understand). But holding AFPO is a high risk exercise.…
Pets at Home (PETS) offers a profits warning this morning and is down 8%. I think this trend is inevitable but concede that I originally went too early triggered by a Pavlovian response to KKR’s departure. However, profit warnings come in threes… ***** I sold a smidgin of Pantheon (PANR) at 74p to cover teatime…
No pay: Optimal Payments (OPAY), which is the old NeTeller, a very satisfactory short of yore, seeks full listing. However, today it is revealed that it is finding it difficult to hold on to its customers’ data. This is the current equivalent of paedophilia and denies full listing access. I sold at 300p. Anyway, I…
