Game For A Shop
Jan. 6th, 2006 07:19 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
peterbirksA few years ago, just before the beginning of Lord of the Rings mania, I had a look at the share price of Games Workshop and idly considered an investment. I think that it was about 147p at the time. I had always maintained something of an interest in GW, going back as it does to the days of games fanzines in the 1970s. Tom Kirby is still CEO there. Tom was at TSR for quite awhile.
Anyway, because I always appear to myself to be congenitally incapable of making a correct investment decision when it comes to equities (this isn't true -- I just "forget" the successes and remember the failures) I didn't put in any money. Next thing I know, the rest of the City catches on to the fact that GW is selling kaboodles of LotR stuff and the share price rockets.
Did the investors expect this to last forever? What timeframe are these fund managers on? Three months? Anyway, for the past year or so the price has been coming back down as some of the fund managers have come to realize that, no, the super increase in sales at GW was not a permanent increase, but a "one-off" benefit.
Today GW has announced a fairly serious decline in profits, although it has adopted the standard trick these days of maintaining its dividend, and I guess the markets will hit it accordingly. But, once again, none of this should be a surprise. As GW points out, all the signs were there for anyone with their eyes open.
It all tends to make something of a nonsense of the "efficient market" theory and to lead one to believe that, yes, it should be easy to make money on the stockmarket if you devoted yourself to company analysis full-time and stuck to companies (and sectors) that you understood.
I particularly liked the line from GW that began "Greater operational efficiency from the capital investments at Memphis and Nottingham...
I dunno; they are just not two cities that you see juxtaposed in such a fashion all that often.
++++
Yesterday was just a plain shitty day at work. I like my job, even though it's a lonely job and getting up in the morning seems to get harder every year. I suspect that, like quite a few poker players, I am virtually unemployable, so the fact that I have a job at all is a miracle of modern economics.
But the company drives me mad. It seems full of 20 or 30-somethings who don't seem to care. There is virtually no emphasis on product -- everything is marketing and sales. And I think the marketing and sales groups see editorial as a necessary irritant. So, I'm isolated within an isolated environment. I feel no affinity for 95% of the people I work with and utter contempt for about 50%. It doesn't make for a happy life, and it's only the satisfaction I get from "a job well done" (usually in the face of obstruction elsewhere in the company) that keeps me going.
Oh, and the money, of course.
Anyway, because I always appear to myself to be congenitally incapable of making a correct investment decision when it comes to equities (this isn't true -- I just "forget" the successes and remember the failures) I didn't put in any money. Next thing I know, the rest of the City catches on to the fact that GW is selling kaboodles of LotR stuff and the share price rockets.
Did the investors expect this to last forever? What timeframe are these fund managers on? Three months? Anyway, for the past year or so the price has been coming back down as some of the fund managers have come to realize that, no, the super increase in sales at GW was not a permanent increase, but a "one-off" benefit.
Today GW has announced a fairly serious decline in profits, although it has adopted the standard trick these days of maintaining its dividend, and I guess the markets will hit it accordingly. But, once again, none of this should be a surprise. As GW points out, all the signs were there for anyone with their eyes open.
It all tends to make something of a nonsense of the "efficient market" theory and to lead one to believe that, yes, it should be easy to make money on the stockmarket if you devoted yourself to company analysis full-time and stuck to companies (and sectors) that you understood.
I particularly liked the line from GW that began "Greater operational efficiency from the capital investments at Memphis and Nottingham...
I dunno; they are just not two cities that you see juxtaposed in such a fashion all that often.
++++
Yesterday was just a plain shitty day at work. I like my job, even though it's a lonely job and getting up in the morning seems to get harder every year. I suspect that, like quite a few poker players, I am virtually unemployable, so the fact that I have a job at all is a miracle of modern economics.
But the company drives me mad. It seems full of 20 or 30-somethings who don't seem to care. There is virtually no emphasis on product -- everything is marketing and sales. And I think the marketing and sales groups see editorial as a necessary irritant. So, I'm isolated within an isolated environment. I feel no affinity for 95% of the people I work with and utter contempt for about 50%. It doesn't make for a happy life, and it's only the satisfaction I get from "a job well done" (usually in the face of obstruction elsewhere in the company) that keeps me going.
Oh, and the money, of course.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
That's modern corporate Britain!
Date: 2006-01-06 08:37 am (UTC)JG
Re: That's modern corporate Britain!
Date: 2006-01-06 09:14 am (UTC)Besides, I would imagine that if anyone from the office did read this, then they would be one of the "good" 50% (or, if not, they would imagine that they were).
As for the term "co-workers". Ugh. Inaccurate on several counts, which isn't bad going for a single (albeit hyphenated) word.
Ahh John, I know that your "headline" ("That's modern corporate Britain!") is meant in a light-hearted way, but it's the general acceptance of this as the case that gets me down. Can nothing be done about it? Or should I just accept that I am utterly out of step, and sink deeper into depression and alienation?
I really need to be at a smaller company. But, then we get the money thing again.
PJ
Re: That's modern corporate Britain!
Date: 2006-01-06 09:27 am (UTC)PJ
Re: That's modern corporate Britain!
Date: 2006-01-06 09:27 am (UTC)Re: That's modern corporate Britain!
Date: 2006-01-06 02:00 pm (UTC)Actually Reset my Case is good
Date: 2006-01-06 09:40 am (UTC)I bet you'll feel better by late-Feb. How much of this alienation is a disenchantment that's always there but usually buried or coped with. You come back from Vegas to the dull, dreary reality of Britain and the coping strategies that work in May and July don't seem to cut the mustard.
Life hasn't got any shittier, your shell for dealing with it is just thinner right now. Give it time and it'll grow back.