Portfolio
Buying Unochrome International
Nephew Wilde
It is terribly sad. Just look at my lovely ' paper ' profits disappearing! One gentleman who must take part of the credit for the collapse of the market is Mr James Slater. His predictions that the FT index would fall to 350 really sent shares tumbling and he warned too that Slater Walker shares were a sell rather than a buy in this climate. Now why should one of the leading City financiers make such a gloomy forecast — I asked my broker, Wotherspool.
" Ah, now you touched on a very interesting situation " he answered, "and to my mind, Slater has played his cards magnificently — albeit not to your gain, old chap. You see he's been saying to himself. 'What the rival does not want has to be good for me.' So he accumulates stacks of cash and waits (though goading the market into action last week) for the Grand Setback. When this comes Slater will be ideally placed to pick and choose plum situations to acquire."
How I wish that I was as well positioned in the money game as Slater. Unfortunately, however, I started investing right at the peak of the market. Even so, I do pride myself on recognising the pitfalls Of in vesting in UK equities sufficiently enough to give my portfolio a good spread of overseas trading stocks and other traditional hedges such as oil shares.
And now, I am adding another share with a very interesting overseas interest to my portfolio—Unochrome International. Its activities are in hard chrome plating manufacturing and merchanting, financial services and investment dealing. This is quite a hotpotch group then, but one Hike for two main reasons. First, Unochrome's chairman, Mr Bernard Owens, has forecast a break-out of the profit plateau which has existed for the last few years. But secondly, and more important, is Unochrome's interest in a quoted company in Singapore called Imperial Securities International.
Now Unochrome's stake in Imperial is worth £4 mililon, whilst its own market capitalisation is only about £39 million. This and the humble rating lead me to think the shares are exceptional value. At the same time I am having a clear-out of my other investments and am selling Harland & Wolf, Lyle Shipping and Brown Bayley.
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