Regulatory status.

The firm does not provide investment advice or personal recommendations. It does not arrange, deal in or manage investments. It does not hold client money or client assets, and it has no advisory relationship with any reader or subscriber.

It does not tell anyone what to buy or sell, does not rate securities, and does not issue ratings, recommendations or price targets. A note states what the firm concluded and what it holds. It does not instruct a reader to do anything.

Nothing published here is an offer or an invitation to buy or sell any security, or an inducement to engage in any investment activity.

It produces in-depth research on individual companies and publishes it, some here and the rest to subscribers. Research is information and analysis: a record of what the firm concluded and why, with the evidence and the conditions attached.

Every note is written once and published unchanged to everyone who receives it. Nothing is written for a particular reader, commissioned by one, or altered for one. The firm does not know a reader's circumstances and does not ask.

It therefore takes no account of any reader's circumstances, objectives or tolerance for risk, and cannot be suitable or unsuitable for anyone in particular, because it is not written for anyone in particular.

A subscription buys access to the firm's published research. It is a subscription to a publication, in the way a subscription to a journal is — not the engagement of an adviser, and not a service performed for the subscriber.

Subscribers receive the same notes, written the same way, at the same time. Paying changes what you can read. It does not create an advisory relationship, does not entitle anyone to a personal view, and does not put the firm under any duty to consider a subscriber's own position. The firm does not manage money, and it will not tell a subscriber what to do with theirs.

Requests for a personal recommendation are declined rather than answered.

The firm invests its own money in the companies it writes about, and it says so. Every note carries the position held in that company on the day it was published — long, short, or none — stated in the header, in the running footer, and in the disclosure at the foot.

That is a conflict of interest, and publishing it is the point. A reader is entitled to know the firm has money behind the argument, and which way, before weighing the argument. What follows from it is set out under disclosures.

Carry out your own research, and seek advice from a suitably qualified and regulated adviser.

The value of investments can fall as well as rise and you may get back less than you invest. Past performance is not a guide to future performance.