Progressive Analysts George O’Connor and Ian Robertson catch up on events in and around the UK small and mid-cap listed tech.

Big Beautiful Trade Prosperity deal – George tries to put in it some kind of context vs the scale of what is happening elsewhere. Has the UK sold its soul or did that really happen years ago? Look to the positive and question Germany’s and France’s position.

Then Oracle – the big jump. The whole world now knows what it’s like to be a UK small-cap fund manager. The big ego tech boss with a track record of missing results declares that he has HUGE committed revenues ahead of him with limited visibility on both the final customer and the funding, sounds all too familiar What does Larry Ellison understand by commitment anyway – probably depends on which of his six wives you ask.

Feels a bit like Jan 10th 2000 AOL – Time Warner. But it’s different this time – why? Because the internet needed funding and so the bankers and brokers had been seeing the big dollar signs for several years by that point. This time Wall Street has been restrained, and analysts have frequently asked tricky questions, but all that could change now.

Looking at UK company news, George highlights SThree’s concerning results, Tinybuild’s recovery, whilst Ian ponders Judges Scientific in the light of Spectris and asks why UK fund managers and analysts seem to be stuck in an analog world.