Some brief admin..
First things first, I'm happy to say that I am - as of the start of August - gainfully employed, thanks almost entirely to this blog. I am deeply obliged to all the people who contacted me, mentioned the post to other people and, more generally, everyone who's read the blog. I started it three years ago as a way to learn more about something I found myself interested in, and now find it has proven a fantastic tool for meeting both private and professional investors on top of the learning process. All in, it's been a pretty sweet deal!
My role is at a small hedge fund in London, basically researching stocks in a vein not too dissimilar to what I've done on the blog over the last three years. I haven't quite figured out exactly what direction the blog itself will take; predominantly because, as long-time readers might have noticed, I vociferously complain about even a whiff of potentially divergent interests. Usually that's with reference to company management teams, but given the overlap between my soon-to-be professional life and the stocks I cover here, there is a hypothetical situation whereby I'm not comfortable writing about a stock - or group of stocks - for one reason or another. Those are things I need to iron out!
I'm available, of course, on the same e-mail address as ever.
H&T Group
Back to the more interesting stuff, though, and a stock that I haven't thought about for far too long is H&T Group - a company I find myself, as ever, very confused on. I think I called the drivers of the group reasonably accurately in my first post a couple of years ago. I'm also very tempted to forgive the poor performance of the stock price because it was a stock very heavily negatively correlated with the rest of my portfolio. It's a company that would have continued to do extremely well if the gold price remained at its absurdly high, nerve-induced levels. I'm not sure if I should really say this as a stock-picker, but I could probably justify the purchase by saying it was a company that was extremely cheap if volatility and recession continued, and not too expensive if it didn't. As I said then:
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