On the road again

This week started on Sunday, not that any week ever really starts and stops in this game, but that is the constant joy. I leave home early afternoon for Edinburgh with Peter Harrison, Chairman of the Whitehead Group, a firm of IFAs, with whom we share a building, and many clients.

Heading north – Sterling and the price of lambs……..

The roadworks on the M6 are horrendous, maybe eight different sections on the way north, so there is little chance of Peter beating my record. Which, clearly I cannot divulge, and probably cannot repeat, since I was younger then, and not so responsible. Well, nine months younger. The fields are full of lambs, lovely to see; for many years after Foot and Mouth, it seemed as though nothing was left alive. The sharp fall of Sterling against the Euro has really benefited these farmers; a lamb is now worth 30% more, when exported, than two years ago. And why bother exporting it, when you can just charge the same increase at home. Food price inflation; very big theme, multi year. Thankfully, we have this covered off in our portfolios.

And it is not a one way ticket for these guys; petrol in the boarders was 122p a litre, as we passed through; cost push inflation is on its way. You can not begrudge that they are beneficiaries of a weak currency given the tough life they lead, albeit they get to live in stunning surroundings.

A miscalculation ……

We stayed in the Hotel du Vin, and with our client meeting us there on Monday morning, it was the only building we entered during our stay; odd. They have a deal whereby you get charged £25 a night for the room, if you spent £75 in their, very good, restaurant. Which sounded a plan….when we booked. However, whilst Peter and I get on very well, we were not sharing a room, so it dawned on us that we had to spend £75 each, but thankfully they had a wine list to solve the problem.

Stopped to see another client in the Lake District on the way back; he was about to replace his Raeburn with a highly efficient gas boiler, which I found both sensible, and sad. Our Aga is the soul of the house. When it works..

(Less) time in the Capital……

To London for two days on Wednesday. Such is the pricing system on Virgin Trains, these days, that the cheap tickets allow you to get to an appointment by midday, and you need to be out by mid afternoon, so two days is, actually, 26 hours. Of this, 16 were spent in “meetings”, with four different investment houses. One of the joys of being in this industry so long is that many of the people I started out with now run them; thus, conversations are meaningful, and in depth. Two of the four meetings end with the standard “we never had this meeting”, and sometimes I think I am reading tomorrows newspapers. But it is fun to be involved at this level; maybe, hopefully, they trust me, or perhaps they think that being 200 miles north of London, we are out of the loop.

The third I don’t want to tell you much about, either. We are looking for a replacement for our beloved Nevsky Fund, a long/short hedge fund that has delivered 750% over the last 10 years, and this may be the answer. There is much more work to do, but I have secured capacity, I think. We do not want the doors to close before we get to the party.

Professor Two Brains……..

So, the fourth meeting starts at 16.00, at the Royal Ocean Racing Club in St James s. As, or if, this blog develops, you will learn of my love of the sea, so this was special. Many of these London clubs are really stuffy, but not so this one. We have come to a roundtable with David Taylor of Chelverton Asset Management. I have known him for years, and invested with him before; the fund is small, but I promised him last Summer that I would support him, if he found others to do likewise, and that is why we are here. Even so, with our injection, and that of others, it will still be too small for Mercater clients. A professor turns up, eventually, to explain how smaller companies, with a value driven bias, have outperformed most other things, and he has pages of graphs to prove it, and even invented the indices.

I am sure he has a spare brain, in a carrier bag, and as chart number 40 looms ahead, at 18.00 on a Wednesday evening, I think I have met my match. Chelverton was established by another David, who, it turns out, worked for 3i in Manchester in the Eighties, so we swap tales of people we knew then, and the outrageous things they got up to. In hindsight.

Most of the team head for the East India Club, for a sharpener, when supper is over.

“Do come, Oaksey”! And, yes, tempting. I mean, is there a West India Club? And does it have those skinned lions in the bar, and how on earth do you become a member of this place, even if you were so minded? But, it is getting on for midnight, Wednesday evening; been a long week, already.

Catching up in the office…….

Home at an early time on Thursday, having escaped London. There are internal meetings on Friday morning, but I have been out of the office for three days, there are hundreds of e mails to process, and whilst I can view these on my travels, the technology remains shaky. I also need to stick half a bar in Chelverton.

Lunch soon looms, a bond fund manager has flown in from Jersey. Like the Prof on Wednesday, he also has a spare brain. However, apart from discussing fixed interest, he tells me all about Jersey Royals, and how the supermarkets nearly destroyed the whole business.

Next week, the Budget; surely a work that will take economic theory, statistics, and plain common sense, to a new low.

Followed on Thursday by the announcement of the election, to be held on May 6^th.

Or maybe not.