Bruce Packard

Filtronic: a UK success story cashing in on the space race Filtronic has become an all-too-rare Aim success story since it moved down to the junior market

#FTC Bored of reading all the doom and gloom about the UK and #AIM stocks? Here's an AIM listed UK tech success story! moneyweek.com/investments/...

Bi-Weekly Market Commentary | 23/07/2025 | DOCS, BKS, CRL | Gilts to crowd out UK mortgages? - ShareScope Articles The FTSE 100 rose to just above 9,000, up +0.8% in the last 5 trading days. The Nasdaq 100 was up +1.4% while the S&P 500 was up +0.6% over the same time

knowledge.sharescope.co.uk/2025/07/23/b... Companies covered #DOCS, #BKS, #CRL

An Israeli family office (possibly Mirilashvili?) wanted to commit the final $2 million to his $100m seed round...

... for a chap whose parents are from Iran.

The Man With the Hot Hand The dizzying rise, brief fall, and white-hot resurgence of Abstract’s 34-year-old Founder, Ramtin Naimi

joincolossus.com/article/ramt... "Marc Andreessen, Chris Dixon, David Sacks, Keith Rabois, Michael Ovitz, Kevin Hartz, Bill Ackman, Stanley Druckenmiller, and Kevin Warsh bought 20% of his management company, for $10m" Blimey.

Revisiting some chat transcripts after Tom Hayes’ exoneration What are the lessons of the Libor scandal?

It's up! A delicately and subtly lawyered review of whether or not there was something kind of scuffed going on in LIBOR rates trading.
www.ft.com/content/9a72...

We could cancel all weekends and public holidays - which would be "good for the economy" and terrible for actual people.

Bi-Weekly Market Commentary | 09/07/2025 | MANO, AOM | Are we asking the right questions about LLMs? - ShareScope Articles How confident can we be that the tech companies spending hundreds of billions of capex on LLM will generate adequate returns? Companies covered MANO and AOM.

knowledge.sharescope.co.uk/2025/07/09/b...

When I started work in equity research, I had to learn to think in UK bank balance sheet amounts, and that now helps me visualise orders of magnitude.

London’s low-traffic zones ‘cut deaths and injuries by more than a third’ Exclusive: Study also finds no change in number of casualties on roads just outside low-traffic neighbourhoods

NEW: Big study of low-traffic neighbourhoods in London suggest they cut road injuries and deaths by more than a third within their boundaries with no apparent negative safety effect on nearby roads. This feels a *major* boost for proponents of such schemes.

www.theguardian.com/world/2025/j...

Funnily enough, Gary Lineker sent his son to Charterhouse. Despite having some excellent teachers who managed to get me into Durham, young George Lineker failed to get into university. www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/ar...

This already happened in finance 20 years ago.

Algo's beat human traders, but then algo's had to compete against other algo's.

We're now just seeing the same tech applied to job hunting and dating websites.

Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (Routledge Classics) Buy Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (Routledge Classics) 1 by Douglas, Mary (ISBN: 9780415289955) from Amazon's Book Store. Everyday low prices and free delivery on eligible orders.

Aha - I should have guessed that you are a fan of Mary Douglas' Cultural Theory of Risk amzn.eu/d/8QlPSfI

Lars Windhorst’s Tennor Holding declared bankrupt Company that borrowed billions from investors collapses into insolvency over unpaid Dutch tax

Tennor Holding, Tennor International, Tennor Group...

www.ft.com/content/90d0... @bondhack.ft.com

...but will anyone lend Lars a tenner?

What a chart!

Shows the changing share of S&P 500 assets which are intangible vs tangible, from a CFA institute report

H/t Matteo Lombardo on LI

How amateur investors could rescue UK stocks Private investors must be the beneficiaries of a stock market recovery, says Bruce Packard – not brokers and fund managers

moneyweek.com/investments/...

An implicit assumption in financial regulation is that professionals with Bloomberg terminals and access to company management have an advantage. People should hand their money to someone in The City to manage because they can't trust themselves.

I disagree.

Tesco and Sainsbury's banking JV's didn't work in the UK. I'm not sure why not? Customer inertia? Or something else?

- I would have expected after 2009 supermarket-banks could have attracted more UK customers and been viable.

Bi-Weekly Market Commentary | 11/6/2025 | FTC, GHH, RFX | Who is buying a thousand tons of gold a year? - ShareScope Articles As concerns rise about the outlook for government debt, a look at what could be driving prices in the precious metals sector. Companies covered FTC, GHH and

knowledge.sharescope.co.uk/2025/06/11/b...
As government debt fears grow, precious metals are surging. Who's buying 1,000 tons of gold a year and why?

Spotlight on #FTC, #GHH & #RFX

I have a dumb question:

how can Calastone still be reporting monthly fund outflows from UK equities, while AIM has bounced +22% since the start of April?

Is this retail money going directly into AIM, as professional fund mgrs are forced sellers?

"In order to build up the successful cluster in the first place, you need to provide a stable, rule-of-law environment in which people can be confident that they’re going to be able to enjoy the benefits of the investments they’re making."

This is also why we don't move to Minsk to found start-ups

If fining bank shareholders was an effective way to regulate banks, you have to wonder why regulators kept fining taxpayer owned RBS for bad behaviour.

Bi-Weekly Market Commentary | 28/5/2025 | SDI, CBG, BEG | AIM exits continue - ShareScope Articles The FTSE 100 was up less than half a percent to 8,717 over the last 5 days. The index is now flat versus the start of April, just before Trump announced his

A look at the rising number of companies exiting AIM, and whether a rebound in IPOs might offer investors some relief. Featuring #SDI, #CBG, and #BEG. 📉📈. knowledge.sharescope.co.uk/2025/05/28/b...

Go for it. I would imagine that the author would like as many people to read as possible....

Games Workshop (GAW LN): In the Grimdark Future, There Is Only Profit This UK Consumer Discretionary Business Has Quietly Crushed the Mag7 with Premium Plastic, Fanatical Fans, and Fortress-Like Margins

Just came across this Games Workshop #GAW substack write-up: In the Grimdark Future, There Is Only Profit open.substack.com/pub/stoacapi... h/t @memyselfandi007.bsky.social

His side of the story is that shareholders approved the acquisition of ABN Amro, and he was encouraged by institutional shareholders, hedge funds etc and his M&A advisors at Merrill Lynch, which itself needed to be rescued...

And just to put that into perspective, at the time RBS/NatWest/ABN was the biggest bank in the world by total assets (over £2.4 trillion on a statutory basis) .

I remember the banking sector "pivot to Asia" in early 2008 😱😱😱

Bi-Weekly Market Commentary | 14/5/2025 | SPA, ELCO, OCN | Trump’s Trade Truce - ShareScope Articles Markets have reacted well to the trade truce between the US and China, yet there may still be problems ahead. Companies covered SPA, ELCO, and OCN.

knowledge.sharescope.co.uk/2025/05/14/b... Stocks mentioned #SPA, #ELCO & #OCN latest

Also, think about where the cash deposits in banks go...bank funding is lent out to Buy to Let landlords. So, if you give your money to the bank, you're funding a highly leveraged investment in property, rather than providing capital to companies to invest and employ productive people.

My thoughts on the 'voluntary disclosure' of FX broker #argentex #AGFX ...."Riskless Principal" indeed the-blindspot.com/guest-writer...

Just came across this fascinating piece of accademic accounting research (don't laugh!) looking at "non-answers" in management / analyst Q&A conference calls. #studysilencetolearnthemusic

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10....