The Evil Diaries: “Another true story of urban life”

The saga continues at Gate Ventures (GATE), now 212p. And yesterday a well known ETF fund manager called by and pointed out that Gate is by no means alone in operating a manipulated share price. For instance he drew my attention to the Hang Seng China AH Premium Index (Google away) which notes the premium that stocks in general quoted in China enjoy over their identical counterparts quoted in Hong Kong. It is currently 33% and has no chance of persisting since the Chinese know perfectly well how to get cash into Hong Kong and invested accordingly. The reason for the premium is the sheer weight of lunatic Chinese retail investors. This is not a permanent condition – the Premium Index stood at a discount of 10% about a year ago. But the premium phase is where we are now.

For instance, take Beijing Baofeng Technology. This was floated about two months ago and has risen thirty-four fold, rising every day bar yesterday. It is capitalised at £2.9bn and is of course absolutely certain to crash. I do not know how to short this stock but, like Gate, it will collapse.

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I see that Mitie (MTO) reports on Monday. Short it today. Monday will surely be too late.

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Another true story of urban life: a couple of days ago, I answered my doorbell and let in an Ethiopian or Somali (or so I judge from his slim nose – this is an Arabian influence which typically renders the women of North East Africa beautiful because elegant) delivery man complete with trolley and two cases. 

Since there was uncertain labelling, I said that I presumed the delivery was for me and that it was two cases of wine.

At this point, the chap, who had by then wheeled the trolley into our hall, said he could not unload these cases since to do so would be against his religion. So I did my best to unload them myself but had to desist since I feared dislocating my back. Further, the trolley man stopped me from even trying to unload the two cases, pointing out that it was against his religion to play any part in delivering alcohol. This includes stopping me from taking delivery of my own wine. (I would have thought that this policy could have been settled before starting out from the UPS depot.)

So he said he’d get his mate. Accordingly, I made to stand over the delivery whilst he went off and got his mate. But he insisted on taking the trolley and the two cases back out of our block of flats.

A few minutes later his mate wheeled in the stuff in a good-humoured manner and apologised for his colleague’s madness and advised that his colleague would not be long engaged in this business.

I’ll probably find in a few years’ time that the first trolley man, he of the curious religious restrictions and who is clearly off his trolley, is head of Al Qaeda, South East England branch.