The Rishi relief rally continued today as both shares and the pound rose. Admittedly, some of the pound’s rise is probably more down to dollar weakness than anything happening in the UK. Alphabet, which owns Google, and Microsoft announced disappointing results last night and their share prices have tumbled, hitting confidence in the US.

The FTSE 100 rose 0.6% today to 7,056 points while the FTSE 250 was up 1.5% at 18,106 points.

Shares in RWS Holdings (RWS) have soared 12% today to 309p after the language services company said that trading for 2022 was in line with expectations. Revenues have risen 8% and cash generation remains "strong". That comment on cash generation is very encouraging because RWS already has a strong balance sheet that should now get even stronger. Net debt was just £10 million at the end of last year.

So there’s much to like here; there are just two possible minus points. Firstly, RWS has driven a lot of its growth by acquisition. Previous takeovers seem to have gone fine, but acquisitions increase risk as execution can be tricky. The other issue is return on capital. This figure tells us how much profit RWS makes when it invests fresh cash into its business. For a technology company, you might expect a higher return than the current 5.7%. To be clear, we’re not saying this return is disastrous – it would just be nice if it were a bit higher.

Hochschild Mining (HOC) was a big small cap riser after the gold and silver miner said that the third quarter was best of the year so far. The company also confirmed a "major discovery" at the Pallancata deposit. The shares closed up 9.3% at 63p. In the three months to September, Hochschild produced 116,000 ounces of gold equivalent, down 6,000 ounces from a year earlier but 9,000 ounces higher than in the previous quarter.

Hochschild has had a difficult year. It mainly operates in Peru where political turbulence has triggered worries of production halts. And neither the gold price nor the silver price has performed well. Gold is down roughly 20% since March and silver is down about 15% over the same period. The company is trying to diversify out from Peru, but for now, the heavy concentration on that country is a worry.

Nanoco (NANO) said this afternoon that it was launching a patent case against Samsung in China. The news boosted the share price and it closed at 37.8p, a rise of almost 14%.

Nanoco makes nanomaterials that can be used in a wide variety of applications including electronics, bio-imaging and horticulture. Nanoco argues that Samsung has carried out "wilful infringement" of its patents in China and elsewhere. In fact, today’s litigation follows cases that have already been filed in the US and Germany. Nanoco has secured funding to help it pay for the litigation in the three territories, which should reduce risk for the firm. It also means that Nanoco won’t receive all the damages should it win the cases.

Lithium investors have had a fantastic 2022. The metal is used in batteries for electric vehicles and increasing excitement about this application has boosted the lithium price by almost 190% over the last year.

Atlantic Lithium (ALL) is a £200 million Lithium player developing assets across West Africa. Atlantic released an encouraging update last week on its flagship project, the Ewoyaa Lithium asset in Ghana. Atlantic suggested that the mine could generate revenue of $4.8 billion across its lifetime and in an interview today with Alliance News, the company’s chairman said the numbers for the project were "quite insane". All the excitement has triggered an 9.5% rise in the share price today to 34.4p.

Standard Chartered (STAN), the Asia-focused bank, announced a 40% rise in third-quarter profits but the shares are still 5.1% down at 526p.

The third-quarter profit of $1.4 billion isn’t just higher than last year, it’s also higher than the average analyst forecast of $1.1 billion. As with most banks, profits have been boosted by higher interest rates. If rates are higher, banks can widen the gap between the interest rate they receive from borrowers and the interest rate they pay out to savers.

So why is the share price down?

One reason is that Standard’s credit impairment charges have jumped to $227 million, $20 million higher than expected. Much of that rise is down to the slowing Chinese property market where some developers are struggling to repay loans. What’s more, Standard warned that the outlook for Chinese real estate will remain "challenging" and it expects "a protracted recovery". Another concern is that Rishi Sunak may be tempted to impose a windfall tax on bank profits, especially if profits continue to rise.

Consumer goods giant Reckitt Benckiser (RKT) pushed up its prices by 12% over the last year, but sales volumes are down 4.6%. That means overall revenue has risen 7.4%. The market is focusing on the decline in sales volumes and the shares are down 4% at £57.22. Reckitt was particularly hit by falling sales of the Lysol disinfectant (Dettol in the UK). It seems we’re worrying less about the risk of nasty germs and infections in the house compared to a year ago.

Reckitt’s finance director warned that consumer price inflation was still rising and that this would be a challenge for the company over the next year.

Reckitt’s biggest attraction for investors is that it pays a decent dividend – currently the yield is just over 3%. But given the worries about inflation, you shouldn’t expect the dividend to rise much, or at all in the near future.

Just like Standard Chartered, Bytes Technology (BYIT) has seen its share price tumble even though its latest results looked pretty good at first glance. The software and cloud services company said that first-half revenue rose 28% to £94 million, and the interim dividend was hiked from 2p a share to 2.4p.

The problem is that the cash flow figure was less impressive, down 17% at £36 million. Many investors focus on cash as the best indicator of how a business is really doing, so the lower cash flow is a concern. Poor results from the big US tech players last night, especially Microsoft, won’t have helped either. The share price closed almost 14% lower at 377.6p.

Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust (SMT) was a big share price faller earlier in the day on the back of the disappointing results from Microsoft and Alphabet. The trust is a big investor in US tech stocks and has made sizeable profits from the likes of Tesla and Amazon.

The trust retraced a big chunk of the share price fall in the last hour or so of trading, and closed down 1.4% at 755p. It’s hard to understand why that happened as Microsoft and Alphabet are showing much bigger falls at the time of writing.

Now take a look at our weekly share tips