Alistair was a freelance contributor to The Investors Chronicle, writing its No Free Lunch column for 15 years and The Investors Chronicle Guide to Charting (still available on Amazon). He wrote for many other publications including a weekly column in The Financial Times. In 1999 he was voted the Periodical Publisher’s Association Business Writer of the Year. At the same time he was developing a totally unrelated online retail business (thefishsociety.co.uk) which eventually grew to a point demanding his full time attention apart from a few writing assignments. He runs his own pension fund which has a very low turnover and a decent record.
Like my fellow contributors Richard Beddard and Maynard Paton, I buy for the long term. Indeed, glancing through their recommendations, I found several of my own favourite shares. As a retail investor, I’m an outsider but I have found that painstaking research into not just the numbers but also the “feel” of a company, especially its stewardship, can yield good returns.”
Older readers may recall a distant era when electrical devices used to plug straight into the wall. Nowadays, everything electrical seems to need an annoying little box between it and the wall. That box is called a power supply and these are the business of XP Power. But not the annoying ones. XP doesn’t do
THE SETTING Kainos (Greek for fresh, innovative) was launched in 1986 when the old British IT champion ICL recognised the quality of computer science graduates from Queen’s University Belfast. ICL had a new project involving electricity network analysis and Queen’s had just set up one of the first university incubator companies, Qubis, which was keen
THE SETTING After nine years of impressive revivification under CEO Heejae Chae, the specialist tapes maker Scapa has just delivered three tingling episodes in three weeks. It could have stabilised now but it’s worth well under half its starting price. Knock one came on the day of its annual results, 21 May. The results were