September AIM departures - a main market disaster offers an investing lesson to us all
New issue activity on AIM virtually ground to a halt in September with only one genuine new arrival. With 8 cancellations there were only 1,000 companies on AIM at the end of the month. Despite the declining numbers the overall market capitalisation of AIM continued to surge higher with strong share price performances from many of AIM’s larger companies. The month saw the departure of one of the UK stock market’s true disaster stories, Superglass Holdings, which actually started its listed life on the main market (so no AIM bashing please!) and serves as a great lesson for any investor. We covered it from listing with the headline “Private equity greed gone mad” and our Blog below offers a summary of its short life and the investing lessons to be learned. Our updated AIMsearch search tool offers guidance on which AIM companies benefit from the valuable tax benefits.
London Stock Exchange statistics reveal that at the end of September 2016 there were exactly 1,000 companies on AIM with the total market value £82.98bn. This compares with 1,007 companies on AIM at the end of August 2016 when the market value was £80.57bn. With little new issue activity at the moment October could well see AIM drop below the 1000 company level. Investors should be heartened by the departure of the underperformers and the quality of the current market. The only genuine new arrival was Aura Energy (AIM:AURA) an Australian based uranium company that has major uranium projects with…