EDITOR'S NOTE: Stock-picking has its pleasures and perils
Align the interests of managing shareholders and ordinary shareholders as best as possible
It’s always fun reminiscing about days gone by on the JSE, and I enjoyed penning the feature on the Class of 1987 listings (see page 14). Just a few months into my first job at Business Day — where I covered the automotive and transport beat — I already considered myself a bit of an expert in share-picking.
So just before I was shanghaied into two years of national service in the navy, I urged my mother to drop a good portion of her life savings into a sure-fire winner called Spareco. With a burgeoning taxi sector and an ageing car pool, I was convinced Spareco would be a reliable engine for earnings generation. Imagine my horror when a few weeks into basic training I chanced upon an Afrikaans newspaper’s business section, emblazoned with a headline that Spareco’s engine had seized up...
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