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Lady Luck has been a cruel mistress to gaming group 888 recently.
The internet bingo, poker and casinos group posted a 43% plunge in pre-tax profits today as gamblers reduced their bets and the frequency of their visits to 888's sites.
Despite a number of "recession-friendly" promotions, profits slumped to £14.9 million for the first six months of the year. Currency movements also ate into earnings.
The results left investors keen to pocket profits after a strong run in the past week, sending its shares diving 6.4p to 88p to leave it one of the biggest losers on the mid-tier.
But chief executive Gigi Levy says that 888 is close to signing a "few big deals", and analysts at KBC Peel Hunt reckon this is exactly what is needed to kickstart its shares.
They rate the shares a hold, with a 93p target price, warning that rival PartyGaming's acquisition of bingo website operator Cashcade will be a challenge for the group in the next three years.
Levy must have stocked up on his horseshoes and rabbit feet, because he says we are now at a turning point in the recession and that consumer behaviour is starting to return to normal.
He is so confident, in fact, that 888 paid out a special dividend to shareholders of 2.6p, on top of the 1p interim dividend.
Even this decision had its critics, however: Numis suspects that the special payout came amid pressure from the group's founders and believes that some institutional investors would rather have seen the money spent on acquisitions or growth.
Shares in London went into retreat in thin trading amid fears about tomorrow's GDP numbers.
The FTSE100 index slid 25.08 points to 4865.50 as investors fretted that the growth figures would be worse than the initial estimates of a 0.8% decline in the second quarter, with some economists now pencilling in a drop of 1%.
The gloom came after data showed business investment tumbled by a record rate of 18.4% between April and June on the previous year.
Growing fears that the UK will find it more difficult to return to growth than its continental counterparts means fund managers have trimmed their exposure to shares this month from 67% to 66.4%, according to a survey by Reuters.
Losses from Smirnoff Vodka producer Diageo, after it cut growth forecasts, and engineering group Amec, thanks to profit-taking, dragged the benchmark down.
But Wall Street fared worse, the Dow falling 66.36 points to 9477.16.
There was no such gloom from the land of Borat. Kazakhmys shone brightly as the mining giant said it will beat its output targets for the year.
Just a day after fellow copper producer Antofagasta disappointed the markets, the Kazakh-focused group raced up the Footsie winners board with a rise of 13p to 930½p, thanks to a comparatively strong set of first-half results.
Profits before tax fell by 27% to $645million (£398 million) on the back of much lower metal prices but analysts had been expecting much worse.
The group has ditched its interim dividend to conserve cash and reduce debt.
Investors were also snapping up the shares thanks to positive comments on sales and prices from chief executive Oleg Novachuk, who said that copper-hungry China is boosting demand.
Gold producer Peter Hambro Mining was another winner with a fivefold boost in profits on stronger gold sales and cost-cutting.
Its shares rocketed 52½p to 762p as it said it expects to resume dividend payouts for the full year.
After WPP posted a miserable set of first-half figures yesterday, brokers weighed in on the advertising giant and were largely unimpressed.
Shares in the group may have rallied by almost a third in the past two months but Citigroup is not for turning. The big-hitting broker remains a seller.
Citi warns that the company - and the advertising sector in general- will recover late from the recession.
It is expecting another set of gloomy figures from WPP next year, meaning that its shares look dear and investors should take profits.
But - after a mega sell-off yesterday - WPP's shares added 1½p to 514p.
Premier Oil plunged 39p to 1269p as it reported a 62% slump in pre-tax profits to $72.6 million owing to the falling cost of crude.
But the oil explorer said it is on the hunt for acquisitions as a number of fields in the North Sea are put up for sale by the oil majors.
