Family Money: Emerging markets emerging again?

By Leslie Wright

I am frequently asked about investments in Thailand, and specifically, what stocks to pick on the Stock Exchange of Thailand (SET). For the past four years my advice generally has been: “Don’t”.

Over the past 18 months, developed world stock markets have performed poorly, and the technology & telecomms sector has fared particularly badly.

As investors scramble around for better profits, looking at hedge funds for example, is it time to look more closely at emerging markets again? After all, it’s four years since the last big emerging markets crash in 1997 when lax South-East Asian banks’ lending procedures and hungry currency speculators, starting with Thailand’s baht, tore those economies to shreds.

A number of fund managers and analysts have begun making noises about low-hanging cherries just waiting to be picked again south of the equator and east of Cologne.

Around 5% of the world’s total stock market capitalisation is in the emerging markets, so many portfolio advisors say that 5% of a portfolio should similarly be made up of emerging market assets.

But there is evidence that the emerging markets are, in fact, relatively poor investments.

Judged solely on past performance, emerging markets funds themselves have under performed the developed markets in the last 10 years. Although in some years some developing countries have produced good results - Turkey in 1999, China in 2000, to cite just two examples - these have been at the expense of big swings. They are volatile, risky investments.

Big swings with poor returns

Looking at equity funds, $1,000 invested in an average emerging market equity fund on 1 January 2000 is now worth just $768.

Looking further back, in the three years to January 2001, the average emerging market fund turned $1,000 into a mere $1,072, according to fund monitor Standard & Poors. An initial fee of 5%, the average for emerging market funds, and an inherent annual management fee of around 1.5% - again the norm for emerging market funds - would cancel out that $72 straightaway. Not much joy there then.

What about further back? The Morgan Stanley Capital Index (MSCI) Emerging Markets Index, one of the main benchmarks used to judge the performance of emerging markets stocks and shares, shows that since 1988, emerging markets haven’t actually done that badly in relative terms.

Since 1988, the UK’s FTSE All Share Index would have turned $1,000 into $2,500. During the same period, the MSCI Emerging Markets Index rose by just over 400%. That means $1,000 would now be worth just over $4,000. Not bad, until you compare it to the US’s main stock index, the S&P 500. That rose by 456%, turning $1,000 into $4,560.

The Templeton Emerging Markets Fund, one of the most widely regarded and best performing in the industry, turned $1,000 into $3,828 over a similar 10-year period. But one of the leading global growth investment funds, which is far more diverse in its investments and is mainly invested into the developed world, grew 12-fold in the same period.

The developed world, then, has considerably out-performed the developing world in terms of investment returns.

On top of this, emerging markets are unquestionably riskier. Traditionally, risk is acceptable if there are higher returns attached.

One London risk analyst has calculated that a standard emerging markets fund will rise or fall on average by 20% every 20 months. In contrast, a developed world fund will move by 10~15%. With this sort of Beta, the returns do not justify the risks.

But a major reason why an exposure to the emerging markets has always been recommended by portfolio strategists is so that investors can diversify their portfolios.

If 95% of your assets have lost 3% of their value in one year, while 5% has soared, that 5% will do much to offset overall losses.

And when investors suspect the developed world is entering a down-turn, they will switch money into the opportunities of the developing world, thereby lifting stock markets. It is in part a self-fulfilling prophecy, but it can benefit a portfolio.

More efficient reporting

The problem with such negative correlation lies with “mature” developing markets, such as Hungary.

Better corporate reporting, wiser investment strategies and more efficient assessments from financial institutions, and a clearer understanding of emerging markets in general, means that many emerging markets are starting to behave like developed markets.

Consequently, many share prices and funds have already factored in potential returns. One leading offshore investment strategist recently commented, “Emerging markets have traditionally behaved differently from the developed world in past years. Whether they’ll continue to do so is another story.”

Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic are cases in point. All three countries are at varying stages of their entry into the European Union. Some key aspects of governmental monetary and fiscal policy are being dragged into line with Western European nations. Many of the old-style corporate practices are giving way to global standards, while company reporting is moving towards a quarterly basis.

Both these developments mean greater transparency in corporate life. In turn, investors are more able to make the same kind of investment decisions in the emerging markets as they would with their own companies.

Looking at the future

While this makes for better share pricing, and bargains harder to find, the risk involved is reduced. Less risk and the potential for strong market growth are a powerful argument for emerging markets - an argument that causes many investors to look at the future rather than focus on the past.

Look at the underperformance, for example. The past 10-year period includes one huge collapse, starting in South East Asia and spreading to the rest of the developing world.

Bearing in mind the usual caveat that “all investments can go down as well as up”, are the last 10 years an adequate guide to what will happen?

Leading fund strategists tend to be conservative when it comes to emerging markets, partly due to this inability to predict what will happen.

So, much of the worry about emerging markets as a long-term investment comes down to whether you count from 1975 to 1995, or 1995 to 2000 - or any period in between.

It is worth noting that a stake in emerging markets in 1990 would have performed extremely well if it had been removed just four years later, when the emerging markets’ boom of that time had peaked.

But a similar stake in 1996 would have bombed dramatically. Back to the volatility problem again.

Real changes, real profits

Some independent financial advisers are optimistic about emerging markets, pointing out that real changes are happening in emerging markets. “There have been some significant political, structural and economic reforms put in place in certain key emerging markets since the big crash,” said one. “Valuations are looking very attractive in some cases, if you look at the underlying assets.”

The 1997 crash prompted western lenders to be far more cautious about whom they gave money to. It also forced the governments of emerging markets to improve supervision, and made formerly secretive or opaque companies improve their corporate governance.

How does this translate into economic performance, though? One London-based analyst at a leading French bank has researched the link between corporate governance in the emerging markets and the share price performance of the companies. He believes there is a sea-change occurring in how emerging markets’ companies behave.

He has discovered that the best companies in emerging markets also produce the best returns. This comes as no great surprise. The top 100 for transparency in reporting - they report quarterly and according to western standards - are dramatically different in their performance from those at the bottom.

So if you’re thinking of investing into emerging market funds, choose those that engage in bottom-up investment decisions where the prowess of the individual company counts, not just the geographical location.

There’s some evidence already that judiciously selected emerging markets funds can begin to offer good returns.

After a dismal 2000, both the Taiwanese and Korean stock markets are up by over 20% in Sterling terms this year, along with most of their investment funds. The Mexican sector, too, has had a promising start to 2001.

In contrast, to the time this was written the NASDAQ had fallen by 6% this year and since April 1st 2000 has lost some 65% of its value.

In the end, though, the big portfolio investors such as the pension fund managers - the ones that move markets - have a limited appetite for risk and will probably not move wholesale into the emerging markets until the recent volatility of the developed world is well behind them. And that could take much of the rest of this year.

One emerging market fund manager says that once that has happened, the emerging markets could make the early 1990s emergence look like small beer. “The region was hugely over-hyped throughout the 1990s, then the bubble burst. But we believe that growth rates of the emerging markets will be far higher in the next 5 to 10 years than in the past few.”

This might lead one to conclude that the outlook is indeed positive, particularly in the Asia-Pacific region, which experienced the crash first and has suffered throughout the last 18-months of equity market trouble.

At the moment, emerging markets are running at about a six-to-nine-month time lag behind developed world stock market indicators, so investors might look out for an upswing in late 2001.

But this portfolio manager is still waiting to see a light at the end of what has been a very dark tunnel.

Leslie Wright is managing director of Westminster Portfolio Services (Thailand) Ltd., a firm of independent financial advisors providing advice to expatriate residents of the Eastern Seaboard on personal financial planning and international investments. If you have any comments or queries on this article, or about other topics concerning investment matters, contact Leslie directly by fax on (038) 232522 or e-mail westport@loxinfo.co.th Further details and back articles can be accessed on his firm’s website on www.westminsterthailand.com

Editor’s note: Leslie sometimes receives e-mails to which he is unable to respond due to the sender’s automatic return address being incorrect. If you have sent him an e-mail to which you have not received a reply, this may be why. To ensure his prompt response to your enquiry, please include your complete return e-mail address, or a contact phone/fax number.

Figures don't lie?

We’ve all been hammered now and then by the tired aphorism “Figures don’t lie”. Or do they? It depends. The hackneyed expression as it stands is ridiculous. Figures are used and distorted equally by the most devious and the most guileless, the selfish and the selfless, to buttress their arguments. Because columns of numbers, graphs and charts are usually accepted as accurate and authoritative, they increasingly decorate every sort of news media and bureaucratic report. Frankly, we should be a little suspicious, distrustful, and perhaps even resentful of this growing dependence on surveys, charts and graphs and stop letting other people think for us.

A few years ago this nation was enjoying a renaissance of economic growth and modernisation, a stock market boom, and generally looking forward to a leap into progress and a prosperous future. By all reports, news, balance sheets, a rising stock market, our whole region was looking pretty good. Then came the crash, shock, and disappointment. The figures, as it turned out, were not the whole picture.

Another good example of how figures are used to project a certain viewpoint are the books and reports which come out on the state of the health of Planet Earth. One school of thought creates statistics which estimate that one entire species of life becomes extinct on earth each day. Some reports show figures which cite estimates that from one to two species of plants alone leave us each day. A Smithsonian news report warns that between now and the end of the century species will disappear at the rate of one per hour. At that rate, even though I haven’t done the math, common sense tells me that in 100 years this will be a Lonely Planet, indeed. Maybe that’s why there are so many alien spacecraft sighted in the past few decades. Extra terrestrials have been watching the numbers and are getting ready to pick up a lot of ready real estate.

These sources are, according to the figures represented, reliable, authoritative and well-meaning. The point her, is that we should all learn to process information with personal discrepancy and common sense. Perhaps we should be quicker to quibble over discrepancies, especially if they challenge our own preconceptions or concerns, much in the way we would do with our taxes.

Certainly we need to filter and evaluate the massive output of information which is now a hallmark of modern society. Recently there was a TV program on the air in which the main topic is pets. A psychologist who specialises in matching people’s personalities with a dog breed (yes, you read that right) told us that in the USA one out of four puppies who go home with new owners don’t last in that home a complete year. They are given away or abandoned because the owner has chosen the wrong breed and that breed’s personality is not compatible with that of its owner. This chap also said there are over 1 million people in the USA who set up legal wills which leave all their personal wealth to their dogs. (Obviously these owners and dogs were well matched.) Is the ‘doggie/owner therapy profession’ massaging these numbers to kick start a new growth industry? How can we tell? And frankly, should we care?

There used to be an old expression: “Don’t believe anything you read and only half of what you see”. I won’t advise going that far. In this age of information, if we don’t keep up, we get left behind. All of us, whether we know it or not, are absorbing mountains of information daily. We just need to be a little discerning about the conclusions we eventually make.

by Lesley Warner

by Marion

For many, the concept of reincarnation is one that fascinates. Why should I just die? Surely there is more to it than one fleeting visit to planet Earth? Is this the dress rehearsal or the final show?

If one is Tibetan, then reincarnation is taken as a very normal and accepted part of life, living and dying. The current Dalai Lama, claimed as the fourteenth reincarnation of the original Dalai Lama, has said, “Death is just a change of clothes.”

So whose wardrobe should we be looking in? Is there anything that can give credence to these claims? Like many things in life, the answer is a definite maybe! The reason that there remains some scientific doubt is because it is very hard to apply the rigid principles of science to any examination of reincarnation. The investigator cannot easily step back in time to check with people living “then” and can only rely on the word of witnesses “now” - none of which is 100% conclusive. However, there exists enough anecdotal evidence to make even the greatest sceptic think twice.

One researcher was Dr Ian Stevenson, an American psychiatrist who published a treatise called “Twenty cases suggestive of Reincarnation” in 1966. Two years later he again published more cases, having by then studied over 1,200 reports. Dr. Stevenson was also moved to record that (his reports) “do much more than suggest reincarnation; they seem to furnish considerable evidence for it.”

Take, for example, the following case histories. A six year old boy in Japan described his previous life in another Japanese town. He named his parents, described his father’s death and his own death from smallpox. The investigators took him to the town, and he was immediately conversant with the layout of it, even to the point of being able to identify buildings that had been erected after “his” death as they had not been present while “he” was alive. He gave sixteen specific statements about his previous life in the village, all of which turned out to be correct, and none of which could he have found out elsewhere.

In another, from the age of two years a boy in Lebanon claimed he was the son of another family living in another city. He was investigated by Dr. Stevenson when he was five years old. The young man described being a young adult, and he had a car and a rifle in the previous existence. He spoke of his cousin being killed in a road accident and other personal details of the previous life. When Dr. Stevenson took this 5 year old to the other city, he immediately greeted his (previous) sister by name, identified his bedroom and described how the furniture had been arranged. Even more chilling was the fact that he knew exactly what his last words had been when his previous being had died, a fact verified by his sister.

Even more detailed is the case of a young ten year old girl, Swarnlata Mishar, who identified herself as being the reincarnation of a woman Biya Pathak, who had died twenty years previously in another town. The following is extracted from Dr. Stevenson’s records of Swarnlata’s published case. In the summer of 1959, Biya Pathak’s husband, son, and eldest brother journeyed to the town where Swarnlata lived, to test Swarnlata’s memory. They did not reveal their identities or purpose to others in the town, but enlisted nine townsmen to accompany them to the Mishar home, where they arrived unannounced.

Swarnlata immediately recognized her brother and called him “Babu”, Biya’s pet name for him. Ten-year-old Swarnlata went around the room looking at each man in turn; some she identified as men she knew from her town, some were strangers to her. Then she came to Sri Chintamini Pandey, Biya’s husband. Swarnlata lowered her eyes, looked bashful - as Hindu wives do in the presence of their husbands - and identified him. Swarnlata also correctly identified her son from her past life, Murli, who was 13 years old when Biya died. Those were just some of the details in this remarkable case. One that has been accepted as a true example of reincarnation both by the Pathak (previous) family and the Mishars. Remember too, that none of Dr. Stevenson’s cases were recalling their former lives while under hypnosis - an investigative technique that has fallen into disrepute.

Of course, those people who claim to be Julius Caesar reincarnate and speak in English and not in Latin, or the host of Napoleons who can’t speak French are amongst those who have brought the concept of reincarnation into the realm of vaudeville performances, but since approximately 25% of the world’s population earnestly does believe in reincarnation, perhaps we should look more closely at it? Or should we wait till the next life?

by Mirin MacCarthy

(Scientific name: Ursus maritimus)

Polar bears are the largest bears in the world. In general, adult polar bears stand approximately 1 metre tall when on all fours and have an approximate body length from nose to tail of 2.5 to 3.5 metres. The females weigh around 300 kilograms while the males are generally larger and weigh 500 to 600 kilograms. However, they can grow much larger, and there is a record of an adult male polar bear weighing over 1000 kilograms.

Polar bears have a heavy stout body with strong muscular legs and well-developed neck muscles. Compared to other bears, the head of a polar bear is proportionally smaller and the neck is longer, to allow them to keep their head above water while swimming. They have short, fur covered ears and a very short tail. The body fur is very heavy. The colour varies from pure white to more of a yellow hue. The white fur is important camouflage for the bears as they hunt their prey out on the ice pack. The coat consists of two layers - an undercoat of fine white hair and an outer coat composed of long guard hairs which are hollow and help to make the polar bear more buoyant when swimming. While the external coat is white, the true colour of the polar bear’s skin is black, thought to be an adaptation for better heat retention.

Polar bears are interesting in the fact that they are descended from the vegetarian brown bears, but have adapted to become carnivorous and to be able to withstand the privations of their arctic homelands.

The current theories indicate that somewhere during the mid-Pleistocene period (roughly 100,000 to 250,000 years ago), a number of brown bears became isolated by glaciers. Instead of perishing on the ice, they began a rapid series of evolutionary changes in order to survive, and today, polar bears are totally adapted to their harsh northern environment.

They are found in all of the polar regions of the entire northern hemisphere including Russia, Norway, Greenland, America and Canada. Their preferred habitat is in the area where the northern seas meet the shoreline. In this area, there is a constant freezing and thawing of the ice. It is also the preferred habitat of their favourite prey, the seal.

Since their food swims, so do the polar bears which are able to swim more than 100 kilometres without a pause to rest. Using their very large forepaws for propulsion and their rear paws as rudders, they can maintain an average swimming speed of approximately 10 kilometres per hour. Their diet consists mostly of marine mammals such as the ringed seals, bearded seals and occasionally a walrus pup. If available, they will kill a seal every few days. They can, however, go weeks between meals as they have a very large stomach capacity which is designed to allow them to take advantage of unexpected large meals which will serve to tide them over during leaner times.

The home range is the area an animal travels in its normal activities of gathering food, mating and caring for its young, and polar bears have enormous home ranges. These bears cover very long distances in their constant search for seals. It has been estimated that an individual polar bear will cover an area equal to 259,000 square kilometres during its lifetime.

To keep the numbers up, a litter of cubs is generally around two, and the young stay with the mother until they are around two and a half years old, whereupon they then go out onto the ice to fend for themselves, while their mother prepares for her next litter.

It is estimated that there are currently somewhere between 20,000 and 40,000 polar bears. Canada has the largest population with approximately 15,000 bears living in the Canadian Arctic archipelago and the Hudson Bay-James Bay regions.

by Richard Brunch

From Jas Nolan, Rayong: I’ve just bought a CD-RW drive, a Sony, not that I think that makes any difference. I took the drive back to the shop I bought if from as I thought it wasn’t working correctly as I kept getting ‘overrun’ errors. However in the shop it is fine but in my PC I have only managed one successful burn and obviously, quite apart from wasting CD’s, I am not able to write the information I require which was the purpose of the exercise in the first place. Any advice would be appreciated.

Computer Doctor replies: I think your CD-RW drive has proved to be working OK; the problem therefore appears to be of a local issue with your hardware and/or software. Unfortunately you haven’t given me any details as to the recording software you are using, hardware and operating system so I will talk in general terms. One thing CD-RW’s all require is a constant stream of uninterrupted data from the source whether this is a CD or CD ROM and this needs to be supplied fast enough to keep up with the selected recording speed. You may find that just reducing the recording speed to say 6x or 4x may well solve the problem, even though this will significantly decrease the speed at which the CD is written. However, there are some basic things you should check before submitting to this speed reduction. Initially, try doing as much as you can to reduce the load on the CPU during the burn process. Close all unnecessary programs, these include screen savers, real-time virus checking, disk maintenance software, check the system tray and close those background applications, for those that don’t have an Exit or Close feature it may be necessary to install a program like Startup Cop to prevent these applications starting with Windows, obviously a restart will be required after deselecting applications with Startup Cop. Also if your PC is connected to a network, if possible log off for the duration of the burn, or as a minimum disable File and Printer sharing. If your CD-RW is of the IDE variety also ensure that it is on a different IDE channel to the source drive; most motherboards will have at least two IDE channels each of which is capable of supporting two devices. Be mindful though that mixing UDMA modes on the same channel will reduce that channel to the lowest UDMA device, so if you had a UDMA 100 device (Hard Disk) and UDMA 33 (CD ROM) on the same channel the hard disk would perform as a UDMA 33 device. Another thing which will enhance throughput is to ensure that if devices can support DMA (Direct Memory Access) then this should be enabled. This can be done by selecting Device Manager in Control Panel then the device and Properties. A restart will be required in order for these changes to take effect. Finally, before doing the burn, if this is from a local hard disk, defragment the hard disk; this will greatly reduce the overall load. If you are unlucky and these suggestions do not enable you to burn at 12x, then reduce the burn speed by one increment at a time, through 8x, 6x, 4x and finally 2x, corresponding burn times in minutes for a 650Mb CD are – 6, 10, 18, 36.

Send your questions or comments to the Pattaya Mail at 370/7-8 Pattaya Second Road, Pattaya City, 20260 or Fax to 038 427 596 or E-mail to pcdoctor@pattayamail.com 

The views and comments expressed within this column are not necessarily those of the writer or Pattaya Mail Publishing. Richard Bunch is managing director of Action Computer Technologies Co., Ltd. For further information, please telephone 01 782 4829, fax 038 716 816, e-mail: sales@act.co.th or see our website www.act.co.th

by Duncan Stearn

It has often been said that, ‘One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter’ and the semantic lines are definitely coloured along racial grounds when looking back at the Lao invasion of Thailand in 1827. For the Thais, the attack was a rebellion launched by a vassal state, while for the Lao it was seen as a war of independence.

Although Britain had negotiated the Burney Treaty of Commerce with Thailand in June 1826, relations had soured somewhat between the two nations over increasing British influence in the Malay states, some of which were ostensibly vassals of Thailand.

Laos, which was divided up into a number of separate kingdoms (Vientiane, Luang Prabang, Champassak, Xieng Khouang), also paid allegiance to Thailand, although the state of Vientiane sent tribute for a time to the emperor of Vietnam.

With the British looming as a security threat following a successful war with Burma, as well as encroaching further into the Malay Peninsula, the Thais seemed preoccupied with events to the south of Bangkok and the time appeared ripe for a quick strike against them by the Lao state of Vientiane.

King Chao Anu was a son of the last independent ruler of Vientiane, and, along with two of his brothers had spent the years between 1782 and 1793 at the Thai court in the new capital of Bangkok.

Chao Anu fought alongside Thai forces in a brief war against the Burmese, impressing his overlords and gaining the confidence of key figures in the Thai royal household so that his accession to the throne of Vientiane in 1804 was hardly opposed.

Soon after taking the throne, Chao Anu began sending tribute to Vietnam. However, he ceased this practice in 1817 and began strengthening his military forces in preparation for an eventual showdown with Thailand.

In 1819 a revolt in the Lao state of Champassak was put down with some difficulty by Thai forces, supported by troops loyal to Chao Anu. In 1821, King Rama II of Thailand was persuaded by Chao Anu to appoint his (Anu’s) son Chao Yo as the new sovereign of Champassak.

Unfortunately for Chao Anu, while he gained military strength, he neglected to improve relations between Vientiane and Luang Prabang and the fact that his son was now the ruler of Champassak was a bitter pill not easily swallowed by the erstwhile claimants to the throne of this Lao state. Additionally, his belief that he would be supported in his attack on Thailand by Vietnam was seriously flawed. He had taken action to obtain effective control of the small province of Xieng Khouang, an area claimed by the Vietnamese authorities to be under their sway.

Basically, Chao Anu’s failure to unite the Lao people against the Thais, as well as the realisation among a number of high-ranking Lao officials that Thailand was too strong to be defeated, meant that his chances of carrying out a successful rebellion were extremely limited. In fact, his own Viceroy disagreed with Chao Anu’s aims and maintained secret communication with Bangkok.

by Apichart Panyadee

Dinner plates, soup plates and meat dishes, which were produced in their thousands for affluent 18th century families, were usually of plain circular design until 1740. After this date the fashion was for shaped circular plates with gadroon borders, and many plain services were returned by patrons to their silversmith for updating. If they were not re-marked, the original marks will have been distorted and partly lost during the refashioning. This is easily detected.

Notice the maker’s mark is missing and that the lion passant mark is eroded in a peculiar fashion not consistent with normal wear

Another inventive use for the dinner plate during the last hundred years has been re-hammering them into more useful and appealing rose bowls and strawberry dishes. Again, stretched marks will give this away. More difficult to detect is the conversion of soup plates into dinner plates by removing the centre of the plate, cutting it down, re-hammering and soldering back into the border. An original scratch weight is always a useful check, as soup plates tend to be between seven and one half percent and fifteen percent heavier than dinner plates.

This mustard pot has genuine 1791 marks which were probably taken from a spoon

Entree dishes have been remarkably free from tampering, but the collector should watch for the addition of decoration and the replacement of detachable handles. Soup tureens and sauce tureens are in the same category, with the following additional points: look out for let-in makers on pedestal feet and make sure a full set of marks appears. Otherwise, the piece may be a converted liner. Soup tureens made in the period of 1805-184- often had detachable liners. These liners will have the same set of marks as the tureen except that the town mark (leopard’s head or mask in the case of London) will have been omitted. The faker in the past found a variety of uses for both the tureen liner and the wine cooler liner. While the former can be turned into baskets, bowls or tureens, the latter can, by the addition of lids, become biscuit barrels or ice buckets. Cake/dessert, or sweetmeat baskets are extremely popular and apart from the converted liners already mentioned, dismantled epergnes and converted goblets are the two most common deceptions.

Cow Creamers and Porringers

Popular interest in collecting silver was immortalised by Bertie Wooster’s antics with cow creamers and porringers. The cow creamer in its original form was almost exclusively made by John Schuppe in London between 1750 and 1775, while the ‘modern Dutch’ replicas were made from the 1800’s onwards. Eighteenth century examples are clearly identifiable from the hallmarks. Claims for those without marks should be given a wide berth. However, the modern Dutch cow creamer is worth one-tenth the value of an 18th century English one.

A goblet can be converted to a sweetmeat basket. Another possible conversion to look for is a goblet bowl turned into a wine funnel

Beakers are not very common in English silver and caution should be taken over 17th century examples which bear the hallmark on the base. There is a chance that these may have been re-bodied. Be careful to compare the wear and colour of both body and base. Other conversions and fakes to watch for which are not so common are: tankard lids converted to bleeding bowls, wine coasters converted to soy frames, punch ladles made into mustard pots by the addition of lids and handles, snuff boxes converted into vinaigrettes by adding grilles, and teapots made into toasting racks by soldering on bars. Goblets can also be converted into a sweetmeat basket, and occasionally the collector will come across a goblet bowl turned into a wine funnel. These items, especially mustard pots and perhaps cigarette boxes may have a genuine mark, but often it was taken from a spoon. In these cases, the style may be wrong for the period or the maker’s mark in the wrong place.

by C. Schloemer

Good Points: equable temperament, obedient, good with children, easily trained, excellent gun dog, makes a good household pet, successful show dog

Take Heed: needs plenty of exercise

The Pointer comes by his name honestly. He is famed for his classic pose; ‘pointing’ with its nose and tail in the direction of the game which has been shot. He was the first dog, as far as we know, to stand the game in the sense we know today.

Clean-limbed, lithe, and muscular, without being coarse, this dog is put together for speed and endurance. Possessing courage, and the ability to concentrate on his job, he is an ideal dog for the owner who wants results in the field. He requires less personal attention than some other gun dogs, and will work satisfactorily for someone other than his own master and handler.

The Pointer develops the hunting instinct at a tender age. Puppies of two months frequently point, and for this reason, they are especially suited for derby and puppy stakes.

His friendly disposition makes him a much loved family pet, or a dog which can easily adapt to kennel life as well. Those owners who have their eyes on the ring will be pleased with their choice of this breed. His short coat makes his outline, conformation, and quality easily seen at a glance, and the Pointer is a superb poser.

Size: Desirable height of dog 63.5-68.5 cm, bitch, 61-66 cm

Exercise: Full of nervous energy, and the love of the ‘hunt’, the Pointer needs ample exercise. Owners who have time to take this breed out for plenty of free runs will find they get on well with other animals and are easily socialized. Early training with leash and voice commands will be rewarded with obedience.

Grooming: This breed’s short coat demands less time devoted to grooming, and makes him clean and neat enough for even the most fastidious homeowner to have around the house. Daily brushing should suffice.

Origin and History: There has been some controversy as to the Pointer’s historical origins. For years it was believed that the first Pointers used in England were imports from Spain and Portugal. But that theory has been pretty much disproved through the years. It seems more likely that Pointers came into use in Spain, Portugal, and the British Isles about the same time.

A great authority on the breed, William Arkwright of Sutton Scarsdale, England, spent his life traveling the world to check on the history and development of the breed. He believed that it originated in the East, found its way to Italy, then to Spain (where it developed its classic head), and then to England and South America. However, the development of the English Pointer took place within the confines of Great Britain. The first Pointers of which there is any dependable record appeared in England around 1650. Coursing with Greyhounds was a favorite sport of those times, and the earliest accounts of Pointers reveal that they were taken a field to actually locate and point at hares. When the hare had been found, the Greyhounds were unleashed, and the sport began.

As to the Pointer’s lineage, as usual, we find it something of an enigma, but there is no question that the Foxhound, the Greyhound and Bloodhound all had a share in its making.

Updated every Friday
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