"It was very good talking with you at the Caledonian Club last week - I was the source of the ceramics factory story. In response to the comment about the factory being profitable - well yes it is but what was noticeable was there were virtually no factory floor workers under the age of 50 and of the 350 work force the company had more people working in back office admin and only 150 approx. in the production area. As I said, robots don't pay taxes and governments find it more difficult collecting corporation tax etc. in comparison to collecting PAYE and National Insurance contributions.

"On more positive personal note - as an example of Peter Lynch's investment advice re. using "scuttlebutt", I investigated some of the technologies that were so impressive in the factory and subsequently made an investment in a company called Xaar, which is the market leader in new industrial inkjet technologies - and so far, it's proving successful. So, one lives and learns in this investment business. A good example of investing in something that one can understand and can see future growth coming, sadly at the expense of others.

"Thanks very much for publishing your Powerpoint presentation from your talk - really very useful, as was your Friday night commentary.

"Congratulations to both you and Eoin for maintaining such a consistent, insightful commentary week after week.

"As a pointer to an impending 'market top' - I use various stock screens (on Stockopedia) and recently several of the classic 'value' based screens are producing zero results - only a year ago,they would have produced lists of candidates -it's only in the 'micro cap' area that one gets results."

David Fuller's view

Many thanks for your kind words and informative email. I would be interested to hear in a year or two whether the ceramics factory, which I assume will remain successful, has more or fewer employees. Your "scuttlebutt" approach is a sensible addition and I hope you bought Xaar in February.

I was pressed for time today but intend to use charts in some of the future Friday Audios.