Portfolio
North Sea prospects
Nephew Wilde
It was not that I felt any different — European-wise I mean — when the clock struck twelve and heralded in another year. However the latest New Year's celebrations did somehow seem to seal the end of not just another year but a whole era.
I was at a particularly jolly party at the time. With my stockbroker friend Wotherspool I received guest of honour treatment. For on introduction to the 'host, Wotherspool presented him with a letter. It thanked the host for the party and apologised profusely for our despicable behaviour and rudeness to the other guests. The poor man was so taken aback that he made sure he was permanently with us, thus giving a great social advantage over the other guests.
Of course this was Wotherspool's scheme and when I expressed sympathy with our host's predicament his curt reply was one similar to that given by the poet fieinrich Heine when asked on his death bed if he thought God would forgive him. The poet answered that he had no reason to doubt it, adding the words "c'est son métier."
At one stage in the proceedings we did manage to exchange a few private words about my portfolio. Wotherspool was deeply upset that I had not made any purchase last week and felt that in the first few months of 1973 the market would perform well. He did however express rather less optimism for conditions after the end of the freeze around the beginning of June. "We must meet that hurdle later," said Wotherspool seriously, "but for now let's look at a very attractive situation to buy this week. It's Graham Wood Steel, the stockholder and structural engineer.
"You see," he continued, "this is a fast expanding group. It came to the market last February and has met its forecasts since then while at the same time it has made successful expansionary moves. Perhaps most important among these was the purchase of a seven acre site near the Cromarty Firth at Evanton. It is here that Wood plans to develop a steel service unit and it will be ideally placed to supply the big North Sea onshore operators in the area."
When I raised the point that current earnings might be more important in the market's eye than the prospect of future profits from the North Sea, Wotherspool gave me a colourful picture of Wood's traditional activities. And here there is the carrot of a significant rise in the price of steel within the next few months.
One of the difficulties about buying Wood has been deciding what to sell. Marl Investments, which has performed particularly well, regrettably has to go.
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