Paul Liquorish: Independent analyst who kept faith in gold
1941-2016
PAUL Liquorish, who has died in Johannesburg at the age of 75, was an independent investment analyst whose almost obsessive faith in gold survived a 21-year bear market unscathed.
He lived long enough to see it vindicated this year as the likes of AngloGold, Harmony and Gold Fields more than doubled in value.
Liquorish covered the gold sector with undiminished enthusiasm pretty much from the moment he arrived in South Africa from Britain in 1970 and began working as an investment manager at Sage.
He left Sage to start his own company. He looked for small companies with market capitalisations that he calculated were right for investment, and put his clients into those, with generally happy results.
He also invested in more prosaic commodities such as pork bellies, coffee and especially sugar, which for a time he was almost as obsessive about as gold.
After a few years on his own he became a portfolio manager at Standard Bank for a number of years before going off on his own again. Being independent suited his high-stakes approach to life, not to mention his strong preference for calling it as he saw it.
Liquorish was ready to take bets on just about anything. He did not quite see the point of life otherwise.
A particularly graphic example of this attitude was his regular participation in the almost suicidally dangerous Cresta Run in St Moritz, which involved hurtling head-first on a toboggan down a terrifyingly steep half tube of ice. He also went on an expedition to the Antarctic, the only layman among a bunch of scientists.
He won and lost vast amounts of money on the horses. He and his brother Billy also owned several successful racing horses including Gerald Boy, which won the R50 000 1979 Computaform Sprint, the richest sprinting prize in South Africa at the time.
They owned a box at Turffontein between the Oppenheimers and Graham Beck and were well-known figures on the turf for their enthusiasm, impressive knowledge of horses and racing, and outsize binoculars.
But be it gold, sugar or horses, Liquorish never bet on anything without researching it thoroughly. One wall in his office was given up to VHS tapes of every horse in every race, which he would study assiduously.
The other walls, before the arrival of computers, were plastered from floor to ceiling with graphs tracking market cycles, the performance of shares and fluctuating exchange rates.
He was a history buff of note and particularly well-read on the history of gold mining in South Africa.
He studied market cycles from as far back as records were available and was uncannily accurate in predicting when they would occur, how long they would last and what factors would influence them.
His first gold-related article for the Financial Mail, 2001’s “Return of a Golden Age”, predicted the end of a 21-year bear market that had started in 1980. He said the Washington Agreement that restricted the amount of gold central banks could sell would be decisive, which it was.
He researched gold to within an inch of its life. He visited gold mines and went underground. He understood the technical aspects. Mining executives were not always pleased with what he said or wrote (in addition to the FM he contributed articles to Business Times and Finance Week). But they appreciated his independence and the value of his analyses based on the numbers and a thorough knowledge of the industry.
His obsession with gold was based on trying to get people to realign with a standard of wealth. That was really his calling card. It mattered to him that journalists and commentators got it right. If not, he would phone them up, tell they were talking rubbish and take them to lunch to show them, with detailed reference to balance sheets and other bits of paper used by the accountants, exactly why.
He was a wonderful raconteur and he made a good teacher.
He was a lover of the Goons and Monty Python, whose sense of the absurd reflected his own attitude to life. He never took it or himself very seriously. He regularly made and lost small fortunes without his mood being affected either way.
The only sign that things had gone badly would be the absence of a painting on the wall which he would have had to sell to make up for a loss on the horses or the market.
He participated enthusiastically in the local art market and was friends with a number of South African artists. The fact that he did not like their work was beside the point. He only bought paintings he loved to look at, even if he believed you had to be slightly drunk to appreciate them.
One of his closest friends was John Meyer, not one of whose paintings he bought. They did not make him feel enough, he said.
Liquorish was born in Tottenham on July 12 1941. He went to about nine different schools. His father was a gambler who often owed money and found it expedient to move on.
Being small and always the new kid on the block, Liquorish learnt that a quick wit and fast mouth was a useful survival mechanism.
After getting his A-levels he got a job with a stockbroker in London before going to New York, where he persuaded a large investment brokerage to take him on as a runner.
After hitching around North and South America with a friend for a year he returned to England. He moved to South Africa in 1970.
Liquorish, who died after being diagnosed with colon cancer, is survived by two children. — Chris Barron
He studied market cycles from way back and was uncannily accurate in predicting them An example of his attitude was his regular participation in the dangerous Cresta Run in St Moritz