t1ps

903 days ago

Poor Jim Mellon - Master Investor blows another half a million, accounts just out

You may remember that Rivington Street had the chance to dramaticaly improve its finances by selling the t1ps businesses, including Master Investor, to Nigel Wray for half a million quid back in 2012. A deal was signed and agreed and then poor Jim Mellon was persuaded that this busines,s which had always been profitable with me in charge, would be so much more profitable if left in the hands of Richard “Gollum” Gill and a clown called Mark Robertson rather than useless old TW.  Sadly for Jim he believed Gollum et al.  It started losing cash at once and that dragged Rivinton over the edge. Nine years later we have the latest accounts for what is now the Master Investor Group which is wholly owned by Jim. Ouch.

---

2371 days ago

Master Investor accounts out..oh dear, oh dear, another £500,000 spunked, by Jim Mellon!

It is a good job that my old friend Jim Mellon is so rich because it appears that the assets he stripped out of my old company Rivington Street Holdings, that is to say t1ps and the Master Investor Show, seem to be burning £10,000 of his cash every week. Poor Jim. The accounts for 2016 have just been published and are even worse than 2015. One wonders how long will this very poorly attended show be kept going?

---

2829 days ago

Tom Winnifrith Bearcast 29 June: Dedicated to a miracle baby 15 today

Fifteen years ago today my daughter was born weighing just 1lb 4 oz. Jim Mellon still has the photos on the old t1ps server but for some reason his organisation refused to send them back despite repeated requests. Miserable bastrads the lot of them. Anyhow this bearcast is dedicated to that miracle baby, my daughter. On the agenda, the numerous AIM suspensions today, including the FRAUD Environmental Recycling (ENRT) which is now on a double suspension, plus Fitbug (FITB) and a detailed look at CloudTag (CTAG) and the strange nutjobs ramping the shares which are a storming sell.

---

2847 days ago

This Blog is 4 years old - Happy Birthday: my top twenty stories & 20 Greek stories

I see from numerous congratulations messages from folks who I I do not know, sent via LinkedIn, that I am celebrating another anniversary. Having checked it out it appears that www.TomWinnifrith.com is four years old. It was a very strange birth indeed.

---

3348 days ago

Life’s little ironies…hard not to smile as the excitement at Real Man mounts

When I parted company with t1ps the pathetic wretch put in charge  - Mr Richard “Gollum” Gill  -sent a letter to its then 3000+ subscribers blaming me for everything and saying “new management was turning it around”. That was 30 months ago. At the same time I bought from Rivington – the owner of t1ps – the Real Man Restaurant in an open auction. It was losing £8,000 a month and was viewed as a basket case. 

Wind forward 30 months. T1ps has lost 95% of its readers and was last weekend shut down. So much for the turn around. 

Meanwhile Real Man

---

3595 days ago

It was 24 months ago last week but looking forward is far more fun!

This morning www.TomWinnifrith.com went down. Uh oh…apologies all round, we forgot to renew the domain name! Apologies for that, we are two years old today. It is a week of anniversaries and look backs. On 18th May I “parted company” with Rivington, the company I founded as an employee. Rivington said that it had issued me a 24 month rolling contract as an advisor to t1ps. That was of course not true and I was on my way.

---

3877 days ago

Robert Sutherland Smith: August Pond Life

My old (158 at the last count) colleague from t1ps Robert Sutherland Smith is working out his last weeks at the place that should not be named. As of now he is full time back where he belongs with Steve and myself.  As such he continues his monthly reflections from the ponds at Hampstead Heath. RSS has done a cracking piece on bonds and equity markets - why he is bullish - today on shareprophets (here) but for me writes:

It’s that ‘gather ye rosebuds while ye may’ season of August in high summer at the pond. Blackberries (still an unripened green) are forming in the undergrowth of shrubs and bushes at the edge of the water, reminding us that nothing lasts for ever - particularly northern summers. Soon, there will be fireworks over Edinburgh Castle to mark the end of the Festival and massed bands and pipers will be marching to the old tunes - the ‘Black Bear’ and the barren Rocks of Aden, swaying - down the Royal Mile and into Autumn.

 

---

4001 days ago

UK Investor Show – I hope that you had fun: a few thoughts

I am still completely wiped out. It is incredibly draining doing presentation after presentation and half way through the post event celebrations I fell asleep (ok I had enjoyed a few drinks as well) but I still feel utterly drained. And so once I have ruined a few other weekends by breaking news of a planning oil company merger involving a well-known name I think I am off to sleep again.


Thanks for the many emails from folks who said that they enjoyed the show. On balance so did I. I thought that the talks were more interesting than for many a year. They have been put on video and so will start to go up from Tuesday in a variety of places. But suffice to say you should register now at www.shareprophets.com to catch many of them.

The location was not ideal. Not least that in order to feed my addiction I had to scrounge a spare packet of Marlboro Light from David Lenigas who had thoughtfully come well supplied. But ADVFN and I know enough now and the show was a success and so we are now planning for UKInvestor 2014. Watch this space – we will announce the date soon.

Highlights for me?

The young man who now writes tips appearing disguised in dark glasses to gain entry (not having booked a ticket). When spotted by Steve Moore, he claimed that he was at Excel to go to the International Cake show down the hall and made a swift exit.  

Nick Leslau and Nigel Wray – optimistic about the UK economy and as a double act far more powerful than as individuals. A lot of wisdom was shared by the pair.

Losing the debate with Richard Poulden once again. I am now 3-2 down but I really will try to do slides next year and stage a comeback.

Mark Slater. The obligatory dirty joke but the quality of his analysis of the markets and of individual stocks (three of which have been tipped by myself and Steve) was incredible.

Nigel Farage – unscripted, lucid, funny and on most issues bang on the money. I had a good chat with him and Chris Booker after the event and he is a very funny and pleasant chap. C Booker’s Thatcher tribute was bang on the money and nailed a number of leftie canards.

Above all I really enjoyed meeting so many of you who attended (particularly, I should say, David from Oxford). Thanks for all the kind words and I hope that you enjoyed the day. On stage I had more fun than I have had for years. I can say what I like these days and I feel like a weight has been lifted from my shoulders. I actually enjoyed the day in a way that I have not enjoyed MI days for a long time. With the speakers, stand holders and the audience I felt far more at home than I can remember being for years.

The home team from RMPC & ADVFN staging our first show should be thanked, notably John W, Clem, Fiona and especially Mike Hodges and from our side Darren, Nigel, Sarah, Steve, Robert Sutherland Smith and Martha. It was their first run at this, the second time is always easier.

So thank you to all who attended. ADVFN and RMPC starts work on Monday on UK Investor 2014 which will be bigger and different. I hope to see even more of you there then.

 

Tom

 

PS I should mention one other highlight. The after show pool games. I defeated Andrew Bell of Red Rock. Zak Mir fluked a victory against me. And then it was the final: The UKIP volunteers against myself & Zak. They had been trying to persuade Zak to sign up to UKIP although he is obviously a bit too right wing for them. And so with the prize being that if Zak and I won they would allow him to become the party’s immigration spokesman (Zak’s views are unprintably stern on this matter, making Evil seem like a total Guardian reader) we played.  The bad news for UKIP is that Zak and I won.

---

4063 days ago

Guest post: Zak Mir says EMED to jump from 13p to 20p

Of course all charting/ technical analysis is hogwash but now and again I humour my old pal Zak Mir by bringing you a snippet of his work. On EMED my target price is 38p but Zak seems to think the shares should race ahead to 20p. That would be a start. Here is his share tip – not from t1ps.com natch.

As can be seen from the daily chart of EMED Mining over the past couple of years, we have been treated very rough ride terms of the noisy price action. But the most painful part of the journey could be described as that seen this time last year when the stock jumped from below 8p up to 16p and then back again. It could be argued that for Bulls of the stock to have survived that kind of experience, really would underline their loyalty / blind faith as far as the company is concerned. At least on the back of the early 2012 white knuckle ride it is evident how since May last year despite all the volatility, a rising trendline has been put in place by the shares one that currently runs level with the key 200 day moving average at 10p.

Indeed, the most obvious thing to do is to draw a parallel trendline to this multi-tested 2011′s support line in order to discover what the likely upside here could be – a likely 2 to 3 month price target at 20p for the stock. Indeed, it may be achieved even sooner than this suggested timeframe as yesterday’s 13p low at former post-July resistance remains in place as the fresh support for the stock.

---

4095 days ago

Guest Post: Robert Sutherland Smith on GlaxoSmithKline

Robert Sutherland Smith started his City career the year before I was born. He is, I think, 157 years old. He and I have worked together for almost eight years. at t1ps. He is my friend and he is a very funny and intelligent chap. He is now branching out to celebrate his 158th by doing some freelance writing over at TradingResearchPoint on FTSE 350 Income stocks. He is a great one for focussing on yield. He is also going to do a monthly column for me on this blog on the subject that really interests him, life on Hampstead Heath. I am sure we all look forward to “Pond Life.” RSS today looks at GlaxoSmithKline and starts with a touch of comedy. He is a funny chap RSS.

Medical matters are on my mind as I have the Norovirus. But it takes more than that to stop me writing about companies but naturally my mind turns to drugs. Well I was a young man in the sixties – the 1960s not the 1860s before you ask. Talking of ancient history, the market long ago abandoned the assumption that GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) would automatically build a pathway for shareholders to a starlight future of endless profits and earnings growth, by simply spending 15% of its sales revenue on R&D, and turning that into an approved blockbuster therapy every few years. In truth, costs rose and progress became more difficult – the return on R&D capital was not acceptable.

---

4134 days ago

Minera Drilling News – A Golden Prospect?

AIM, Canada and Peru-listed Latin American gold miner, Minera (LSE MIRL) has followed last week’s publication of a feasibility study on its Ollachea project in Peru with an announcement that it has awarded a contract to begin drilling extensions of the Ollachea ore bodies from underground. This is a company I followed for a couple of years on t1ps – the website I founded but departed in September – and initiated coverage post-t1ps last month, suggesting, with the shares then at 50.25p, it not a bad move to add a few shares in the company to a gold portfolio at those levels. With the share price now 54.5p, the following reviews today’s announcement…

---

4153 days ago

EMED Mining $50 million financing secured – Very Good News Indeed

EMED (EMED) the AIM and TSX listed developer of a large copper mine in Spain has today announced that it has secured a $50 million financing and an offtake deal from commodities giant Red Kite. This is a monumental step forward for EMED and really is very good news indeed. Those of you who bought the shares on October 4th after I wrote this can thank me later: “EMED has been on the point of starting to build a huge copper mine in Spain for ages. But getting the consents needed seems harder than finding a 17 year old virgin in Romford. And EMED is still not there. Hence, having tipped the shares at 14.75p back in July 2007 and with the stock at 9.625p today I look like a bit of a schmucko. Apologies for that. However, I had a long chat with CEO Harry Adams this week and I sense that we are almost there and that now would be a good time to buy.“ I hope you did, the shares are now 11.625p. But they will go much higher and here is why.

---