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Waste appeal
Nephew Wilde
Wotherspool was insistent that he should see me immediately on my return from Scotland. This he did and pumped me for information on the North Sea oil industry. What trust he puts in a layman! However, there was not a great deal I could tell him about likely beneficiaries from the oil boom except that a great deal of business was being done by US and Japanese companies. I did, of cause, give a plug to last week's purchase, Siebe Gorman.
Looking rather dejected he confided, "Trouble is, old chap, I've been scratching my head till the hair falls out trying to spot the right situation in the present market but conditions are so depressed I think I'll drive myself potty." Silently I concluded Wotherspool didn't have far to drive himself. But it did disturb me to see this usually ebullient character so down in the dumps. So, racking my own brain I said naively, "There's been lots of rain, Wotherspool. What about Lawtex; they make umbrellas you know." "No good, old chap," he replied, "you don't think the market's a complete fool, do you" Ashamed at my own infantile way of viewing matters I paid the bill and brought a halt to what had been rather a tedious lunch.
The problem, however, still played on my mind and I wanted to show Wotherspool that I could have the occasional brainwave. Yet try as I might nothing ticked. I thus contacted Uncle George. His recommendation of Hoffnung just before the flotation of the pound had raised him in my esteem.
I can sum up what was on his
mind with one word: "pollution." He told me that he could remember his grandfather prophesying that there were so many horse-drawn carriages that before long the world would be covered by a two-foot layer of droppings. An unsavoury thought, but one that did not detract from today's problem. Before long Uncle George said that we would be forced to live in an environment that would make existence on the moon a possible alternative to living on Earth. "But there will be opposition ", he said, "and in this context take a good look at Sabina."
Well, having done my homework I must say I like this North American stock that is quoted in London (under the mining miscellaneous column in the FT, where the price shown includes the dollar premium). Sabina has mining interests in Arizona and Austria but the main attraction is that the group has an exclusive licence for a process which extracts gypsum from the highly pollutant waste materials from phosphate fertiliser plants and makes it into building materials. There will undcubtedly be a good market in North America. Sabina will not benefit overnight but by 1976 when plant construction has been completed the rewards should become clearly evident.
When I asked Wotherspool to buy me 500 shares he admitted he had never heard of Sabina but when he heard the basis on which I was making my purchase he expressed a desire to hear more about a stock which he felt could do well even in the present climate. Meantime I am selling Firth and Brown at a loss of £290.
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