For investors in Chinese companies, Sino-Forest Corp., is one of the most infamous examples of an investment gone very bad when it declared bankruptcy in 2012 after once being valued at nearly $6 billion.

I remember with fond memories during my youth of the Sony Walkman and Trinitron TV sets as the gold standard in the audio visual sphere. Now Sony seems to be in tatters, announcing an expected $2.14 billion loss for the year ending March 2015 after years of restructuring.

They say profits warnings come in threes and it has certainly turned out to be the case with online fashion retailer Asos. The shares are down a further 10% to £21.80 after price cuts, a fire and infrastructure investments all hit earnings.

Back in July the lingerie chain, La Senza, formerly owned by ex-Dragon’s den star Theo Paphitis filed for bankruptcy and today it was announced that mobile phone retailer Phones4U formerly owned by high profile entrepreneur John Caudwell has gone into administration.

Hurricane Energy the AIM listed oil and gas company focused on naturally fractured basement reservoirs in the area to the West of the Shetlands issued some good news for shareholders today.

The US dollar has been unstoppable of late with the Dollar Index which compares the currency against a basket of other global currencies rising to 84.3. It is now up for nine weeks in a row, a record not seen since 1997.

Like for like sales for Morrison supermarkets were down 7.4% and overall turnover dropped 5% to £8.5 billion as price cuts failed to stem volume declines.

After climbing as high as $103 during Apple’s Cupertino event yesterday evening, the shares finished marginally down at $97 following the announcement of new iPhone’s (the 6 and 6 Plus) with larger screens and thinner and the eagerly awaited Watch.

Xcite Energy’s share price is flat today at 65p despite news that the company “has entered into a Collaboration Agreement with Statoil (U.K.) Ltd. and EnQuest Heather Limited, in order to share field-specific technical and operational information to evaluate the potential utilisation of common gas import infrastructure between the Kraken, Bentley and Bressay fields.”

McDonalds is having a tough time of late with the shares down over 10% since the end of last year as Chinese food safety concerns in particular have hit sentiment.