The Evil Diaries: “Stay clear” of Glencore

I do not know what is going on at Glencore (GLEN). But it is not good. Steer clear.

The CEO of HSS (HSS) departed last Friday. Hereon the share price should go down. This morning’s rise is a selling opportunity.

And APR Energy (APR) approaches its 30th September date with destiny. This is a golden selling moment at 65p.

Finally, the chairman sent me last week an extract from JK Galbraith’s The Great Crash (which I first read fifty and more years ago). It supported a review on the state of play pursuant to VW’s public excoriation:

In asking these questions, we are adopting a level of conjecture we normally avoid. However, at the end of any cycle there are patterns of behavior and market responses that are, to an extent, timeless. We are
reminded of John Kenneth Galbraith’s classic passage from the Great Crash 1929, and feel something of a shudder:

“At any given time there exists an inventory of undiscovered embezzlement in—or more precisely not in—the country’s business and banks. This inventory—it should perhaps be called the bezzle—amounts at any moment to many millions of dollars. It also varies in size with the business cycle. In good times people are relaxed, trusting, and money is plentiful. But even though money is plentiful, there are always many people who need more. Under these circumstances the rate of embezzlement grows,
the rate of discovery falls off, and the bezzle increases rapidly. In depression all this is reversed. Money is watched with a narrow, suspicious eye. The man who handles it is assumed to be dishonest until he proves himself otherwise. Audits are penetrating and meticulous. Commercial morality is enormously improved. The bezzle shrinks.”