TomWinnifrith.com

On the AIM Cesspit unusual share price movements ahead of statements are par for the course. Of course nothing is ever awry. This is a market where a company can issue a statement that it is completely untrue and face no sanction (Verdes – see here) and indeed do a placing 24 hours after issue an untrue RNS (Sefton on March 6th see here) and again there is no sanction. There are no rules on the Cesspit. And that brings me to Arian Silver (AGQ).



Its shares raced ahead in the two sessions prior to lunchtime today gaining some 35% to 6.25p. And then it issued dismal quarterlies with a dire warning that worse may be to come and the shares fell sharply back to 5.5p. Why did the shares move so sharply ahead of the numbers? Who was buying? On what information? As it is an irregular price movement no doubt it is being investigated but clearly nothing was wrong (it never is on the Cesspit) and so nothing will happen.

But let’s not get distracted from the numbers and the accompanying statement. The former are utterly dismal. The latter even worse.

In the first quarter to March 31st the company had a bit of a disagreement with the chappy who processes its silver on a toll basis. And thus revenues were nil. Helped by $700,000 of PLC costs the company racked up a net loss of $935,000. How the xxxx

I offer no comment on this weekly feature it is a simple matter of observation. The two tables below show the most active discussions on the ADVFN and iii Bulletin Boards as of a Thursday morning. I exclude discussions about the FTSE or blue chip stocks as in those cases private investor sentiment and trading has little influence on the share price. I include the odd fully listed stock were Private Investors can drive the price at the margin.

Column two in each table shows the percentage of clients at spreadbetting form IG Index who are long of each stock.  It is fair to assume that IG has a large enough client base and so its long/short balance is indicative of market sentiment as a whole. And the boards at iii & ADVFN have sufficient posters to also represent Private Investor sentiment as a whole.

Thus if 99% of IG clients are long of a stock that is heavily discussed on a BB thread one assumes that there is a lot of ramping going on ( that is to say folks who own a stock urging others to buy by posting bullish comment). And vice versa.

Oh dear, the word on the street is that things are going badly wrong at Great Western Mining (GWMO) but apparently the company is saying that “it is all Tom Winnifrith’s fault.”  As I go to clear another space on the Mantelpiece for my next trophy let me explain.

On May 10th I pointed out that the balance sheet of Great Western was almost certainly a train wreck. That is to say cash minus trade payables was somewhere between just over nil and minus quite a bit. With no revenues at all it strikes that if it is not already trading while insolvent it soon will be. That as you are aware is a very naughty thing to do and if directors are aware that a company is trading while insolvent they have a legal duty to stop doing so and that means a statement that its shares are being suspended pending clarification. But heck this is the Cesspit so what do rules matter?

Now it is clear that Great Western (at 1.725p valued at £1.12 million) needs to raise material cash to keep going. But that is rather hard to do for three reasons:

It tastes even better than it looks and it is today's £9.95 special at Real Man Pizza in Clerkenwell. You see we do so much more than just 20 thin crust pizzas at our little Celtic Italian restaurant.

The AIM Regulation team is meant to discipline companies that mislead investors on the Cesspit. And as such I put in a call today about a certain stock (I am sure you can guess which one). And so after negotiating my way past the switchboard and explaining which stock I wanted to discuss I got through to a nice young man who is looking at that stock.

“Hello, my name is Tom Winnifrith and I am a journalist” I said. “I know exactly who you are!” came the response. As such there was no need to discuss the background. Upshot…another formal complaint is in.

Infamy, infamy they've all got it in for me. Except in this case, it is not me who is in the regulator's sights...



I posted 8 questions for Range Resources (RRL) the other day. So far no response has been received from the AIM Cesspit listed company. We were promised a document relating to its merger with International Petroleum four weeks and a day ago, in four weeks. We keep waiting. And so while we wait I have a couple of other questions.





You can read my last questions and my analysis of why Range shares are at least 50% overvalued here.



And now for the next two. I refer you to a couple of statements made by Range.


Having added shares in specialist environmental support services group, Silverdell (SID) to the Recovery portfolio of my Nifty Fifty website at a 17p offer price in January I clearly do not look entirely Buffetesque with the shares now trading at a 14p mid. They took a bit of a beating yesterday so is anything wrong?

The company announced a trading statement on 12th April. Its results are on 5th June. It thus cannot comment on financials but if something had gone wrong it would have had to say so. It has not. The only news (yesterday) is the appointment on a Non Exec – John Matthews. He seems like a solid if dull fellow. No problems there.

You have just two days to make your nominations for the 2013 AIM Cesspit awards, an annual celebration of everything that is wrong about London’s junior market. So hurry, hurry, hurry.  The point of these awards? Well there are a couple…

The first is that there are numerous awards where the “best” of AIM is celebrated. The market always wants to talk about its triumphs. The reality is that it tries not to discuss its failures and failings openly. It needs to. We all know that there are Nomads out there that will float any POS without, it appears, any regulatory sanction at all.

More importantly we all know that the vast majority of companies on AIM have delivered abject returns for investors. AIM constantly boasts about the amount of money it has raised for member companies. But, so much of that money has gone to greedy directors who do not deliver, parasitic advisors or simply to money heaven as it is pissed away on duff projects. AIM needs to be reminded of that. If nothing else this is a chance for investors to vent some of their justifiable anger.

I know that the editor of this esteemed website has served up a few nominations. Remind me Richard the CEO of which company beginning with N did you nominate for the third award (Editor interject - NEOS Resources and one Mr Stephen Rudofsky)? So join Richard Jennings in making your nominations now before the Friday deadline.

At an awards ceremony in late June, real trophies will be presented to those who have helped make AIM the Cesspit it is.

There are seven awards

The beheading of a soldier in Woolwich today by two men shouting Allah Akbar is a sickening terrorist atrocity by Islamofascist nutters. Quite clearly the two nutters are very much of the home grown variety.

And so when asked to comment on this the local Labour MP Nick Raynsford rightly condemned this as an atrocity but then just could not help himself from saying how there is a multi-cultural community in his manor which sees everyone exist in blissful harmony with the local barracks.  This will no doubt be the reaction of the entire political class, a class so out of touch with how we plebs feel that it cannot bring itself to speak the self-evident truth.

The vast majority of British Muslims are good folk who do not support Jihad and who will condemn what happened just as the rest of Society does. But there is a small minority of British Muslims who either actively or passively (by silence) support Islamofascist terror. And with those folks we are at war, just as we were at war with the IRA.

In those bad old days I remember being spat at as I ran on the streets in a London Irish jersey. But most folks accepted that while some people of Irish descent (like Saint Bono) sympathised or supported Saint Gerry and his blood stained friends, most of us despised the IRA and the men of violence. And as such it was perfectly legitimate to say as much.

Raynsford and his ilk just cannot bring themselves to do so when it comes to Islamofascists. This is not a race issue it is just a statement of fact. We find ourselves at war with a group who attack our very way of life.  Even if we condemn Israel (I hope we do not) and withdraw from our illegal presence in Iraq and Afghanistan (I hope we do) this small minority will still attack us. And we need to acknowledge that.

If Raynsford and a political class which grew up thinking that multi-culturalism was a basic tenet of their belief system which could never be questioned, merely spout more platitudes it will alienate we plebs even more. It will foster even more of a backlash. It is time to face up to this truth. Incidentally it is also time that Muslim leaders spoke as one in condemning such acts without any caveats at all.

Can’t speak Italian? Aha. Well that would be spaghetti and clams in English. It is a traditional Italian recipe with the fresh clams cooked gently in their shells in a white wine, garlic and parsley sauce until they open and then mixed in with the sauce included in the spaghetti.

It is not on our menu yet but it is available as today’s special at Real Man Pizza in Clerkenwell and can be ordered every day as of now once you are addicted.

Why add it to the menu? James asked us to. He’s a local resident and a hugely entertaining man. For you James…your wish is our command.

The noise from the non announcements is deafening. The silence on what matters is frightening. What the hell is going on at AIM Cesspit and ASX listed oil stock Range Resources (RRL). With my call not returned today I guess I have to pose a few questions in print. But if I was a shareholder I’d be shitting bricks.