Daily Stock Market Report (Fri 17th October 2025) -Risk-off, DUKE, PFC, TON, EMG, SHI

Good morning! It's another sleepy Friday in RNS-land, but I'll try to pick out the most interesting stories for you.

Signing out for the week, have a great weekend everyone!

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Risk-off: despite the paucity of company news, that hasn't stopped markets from swinging and the FTSE is down by 1.5%, led lower by the banks. Asian markets were weak overnight.

Barclays (LON:BARC) s is down by a remarkable 5.5%.

Perhaps I should remind readers of the 3-year chart for Barclays, in which this 5.5% fall is just a blip:

Despite this incredible 3-year return, the stock is still only trading at a PER of 8x.

As always, investors want a tangible explanation for today's movement, and the media is providing it: fears over credit exposure at regional banks in the US. A US car parts company ("First Brands") and a used-car dealership that provided financing to people with poor credit ("Tricolor") went bankrupt recently, with financial repercussions for their banks and other counterparties.

On top of that, the market is trying to digest President Trump's threat to impose a 100% tariff on Chna, and of course the ongoing geopolitical tensions rumble on (Ukraine-related news has been particularly loud in recent days).

If anyone wants my opinion - this is just typical noise in the markets. Of course we could have a 2008=style banking collapse on Monday that could make me eat my words. But we could have that any time. I don't see why I should be more worried today than I was last week. First Brands and Tricolor actually filed for bankruptcy last month, not this month. And of course Trump is going to threaten tariffs - that is what he does. And the Ukraine issue is nothing new.

Here's a simple hack that I do with my own portfolio: I do not measure how much my portfolio or my individual shares have changed in value on a daily basis. I can see what they are worth every day, and if I can remember what they were worth yesterday, then I could work out how much their value has changed. But I have no interest in knowing that I am up 1% today, or down 2%, or whatever. That's not going to be useful information, because I'm not going to base any decision purely on daily percentage movements. And as I'm not going to base any decisions on that information, I prefer not to know it.

Someone who is making more short-term trades, or investing based on momentum, might need that information. But I think that long-term investors might not need it at all. Not knowing works for me, at least I can say that much. And I like to think that this hack helps me to mimic the truly great investors: those who forgot the password for their brokerage account, and were therefore prevented from tinkering with their portfolio.

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Companies Reporting

Name (Mkt Cap)	RNS	Summary	Our view (Author)
Smiths (LON:SMIN) (£7.7bn)	Sale of Smiths Interconnect	Sale at an enterprise value of £1.3bn, being 15.1x headline EBITDA, to be paid in cash by Molex (part of Koch Industries).
Pearson (LON:PSON) (£7.0bn)	2025 Nine Month Trading Update	On track to deliver on 2025 market expectations, exps being underlying sales growth 4% and adj. op profit £656m (depending on GBPUSD exchange rate).
Man (LON:EMG) (£2.2bn)	Trading Statement	SP +7% AUM grows from $193bn (June 2025) to $214bn (Sep 2025). Net inflows $10bn, investment performance $10bn.	AMBER (Graham) [no section below] This is the world's largest publicly-traded hedge fund, and sits in its own category separate to the more conventional active fund managers we track in this report. Today's update shows very strong inflows of £10bn that are driven by Man's "long-only" category, rather than the "alternative" category that we typically think of, when we think of hedge fund strategies. Long-only strategies saw net inflows of nearly $11bn in the quarter, which was over 10% of starting AUM - very impressive. Mark was cautious on this share back in April, for good reasons, but I think a neutral stance is fairer at this stage: earnings forecasts for FY25 and FY26 were on the decline then, but now appear to have stabilised. In term of the bigger picture, this share has never really interested me as a long-term investment, as I'm inclined to think that in the competitive world of hedge funds, firms are better owned by hedge fund managers themselves, rather than the investing public. In its favour, it has been a very solid dividend payer, and it currently yields 7%. The StockRanks agree with my neutral stance, giving it a mild 62.
Helical (LON:HLCL) (£254m)	Trading Update	“Significant activity across our exciting development pipeline, with construction progressing on our three live office development sites.”
Duke Capital (LON:DUKE) (£144m)	Follow-On Investment into Step Investments Limited	£3.7m investment to enable Bay Broadcasting Limited to acquire Galway Bay FM.	AMBER/GREEN (Graham) [no section below] It’s a theme we’ve noted before that Duke’s investments are frequently designed to enable acquisitions by the companies that Duke is investing in - a feature which I do view as somewhat risky in comparison to funding organic growth. On the most recent occasion, the acquisition being funded was a care home. In this case, it’s a radio station in the West of Ireland. Duke has built a large position in Step Investments over the years, with total financing now of £15.2m. The Step portfolio has had one or two serious problems, but the radio stations have been pretty solid performers within it, as far as I can tell, and it has continued to pay what it owes to Duke. I should add that the price tag for Galway Bay announced today does not seem particularly expensive. We are AMBER/GREEN on Duke and I’m happy staying that way today.
SIG (LON:SHI) (£107m)	Q3 Trading Update	Full year expectations unchanged. LfL revenue in Q3 flat. Expectations: underlying op profit £31.6m (range £30 - 35m). Demand is "well below historical levels" and the company says it it "performing well relative to its markets".	RED (Graham) [no section below] We've been RED on this suplier of insulation and building products, due to poor profit numbers (i.e. losses) and a shaky balance sheet including significant financial debt along with heavy lease liabilities. The underlying operating profit forecast sounds very impressive at £31.6m, but the list of "Other items" excluded from it is long: amortisation, impairment, restructuring costs, cloud-based ERP implementation costs and "other specific items". So forgive me for being sceptical when it comes to what the actual bottom line might be!  The company has a new CEO and I wish him well, but this is not a stock where I'm excited for shareholders' prospects. LfL growth year-to-date is 1% and only a major upturn in construction activity can fix this.
Town Centre Securities (LON:TOWN) (£54m)	Final Results	“A year of continued resilience”. LfL portfolio valuation down 2.4% year-on-year. Net assets 266p (SP: 127p). Pre-tax loss £3.4m.
Wishbone Gold (LON:WSBN) (£42m)	Red Setter Gold Dome Project Exploration Update	CEO: “Diamond drilling is now on double shift… we are ramping up activities to expedite exploration… results arriving soon from the first drill hole…”
Petra Diamonds (LON:PDL) (£37m)	10 for 17 fully underwritten rights issue, update on refinancing	£18.8m rights issue underwritten by existing shareholders. Bank debt extended to Dec 2029, Notes extended to March 2030.
Titon Holdings (LON:TON) (£10m)	Full Year Trading Update	SP -7% Underlying EBITDA and loss before tax for FY25 to be in line. Cautiously optimistic for FY26.	AMBER/RED (Graham) [no section below] I've become  rather nervous about this one, given the lack of profitability in recent years, and also noticing that Harwood is a 28% shareholder - which can be a precursor to a delisting. Offsetting those negatives is considerable asset backing on the balance sheet relative to the market cap. This full-year update doesn't provide all that much comfort, even if it is officially in line: the company (which manufactures venitlation systems along with window and door hardware) remains loss-making on an underlying basis. On pure valuation grounds I do like the stock, given the balance sheet strength (including £3.5m cash and property valued now at £5.8m), but these nano-cap value plays require lots of patience and can be vulnerable to unusual risks, i.e. delisting. Therefore I think a cautious stance continues to make sense.
Petrofac (LON:PFC) (suspended)	Restructuring Update	No residual value to be retained by existing shareholders.	(Graham) [no section below] Way back in March, the plan was for existing shareholders to be left with 2% of the restructured company. Much legal wrangling and negotiation has taken place since then, and it turns out that existing shareholders will not be left with anything when all is said and done. We were RED on this prior to the suspension of its shares in May, which was the right call, but it was clearly extremely high-risk.