Friday 20th October, 2017

Whenever I walk past Sweetings I think of Tate & Lyle, but not for the reasons you possibly assume.  Got to warn you, this is real scary stuff.  It is 30 years ago almost to the day I was taken for an excellent lunch there by a broker through whom just a couple of weeks earlier I had been buying quite a slug of Tate & Lyle stock on a story concerning the potential offered by the development of its artificial sweetener Sucralose.  It was a Tuesday and the second day of the global stock market crash.  What else to do on such a day other than to go for a big lunch?

 

Fortified by a bottle or two of Chablis and a couple of large glasses of port I returned to the office and calmly perusing the carnage around me it felt like a splendid idea to pay for lunch by averaging down with the stock now at the bargain basement price of c. £5.  I forget the precise numbers, but I think I had paid around £8 per share for the initial position.  The stock price continued to plunge to £4 shortly thereafter and whilst I’d like to claim it was all fine in the end I’m not sure Sucralose really caught on for another decade or so and the shares languished miserably across the breadth of the UK pension funds I was “managing”.  MiFID2…..I was asking for it I suppose.

 

I’m feeling a bit under the weather actually today so this will be short and …..sweet ( sorry ).  Whilst I’m having a bit of a moan I might as well tell you I was up in Scotland and had a bit of a shocker really.  My Easyjet flight was three hours delayed on the way up and an hour and half coming back.  Serves me right I suppose as I failed to wear the lucky OG boxer shorts I normally don for my trips up North.  Still, I was cheered by a story from someone I had meant to meet on Tuesday evening, but regretfully had to cancel.  He was very understanding responding ruefully by recounting that he had been in London on business the day before.  He had got to Euston in fine time to catch the sleeper up to Edinburgh.  Clambered into his bed and went out like a light.  Not passing aspersions, but I suspect he was probably quite well oiled.  Anyway, when he woke up the following morning he found to his complete surprise that the train had never left the station and he was still in London.   Too good.