Gamble of the day: Depressed oil supplier

Even this well-run business has been tainted by the gloom in the oil industry, says Phil Oakley. But it's still worth keeping an eye on.

Buy when there's blood in the streets, said Baron Rothschild roughly two centuries ago. Buy at "the point of maximum pessimism", was how legendary investor John Templeton put it a little more recently. Both were recommending contrarian investing or betting against the crowd.

This can be a very successful investment strategy because investors tend to behave like herds of animals. When the outlook is grim, they sell shares and push their prices down often to overly depressed levels. And when the outlook is good, they pile in and drive them to ever more expensive levels.

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Phil spent 13 years as an investment analyst for both stockbroking and fund management companies.

 

After graduating with a MSc in International Banking, Economics & Finance from Liverpool Business School in 1996, Phil went to work for BWD Rensburg, a Liverpool based investment manager. In 2001, he joined ABN AMRO as a transport analyst. After a brief spell as a food retail analyst, he spent five years with ABN's very successful UK Smaller Companies team where he covered engineering, transport and support services stocks.

 

In 2007, Phil joined Halbis Capital Management as a European equities analyst. He began writing for MoneyWeek in 2010.