New Woodford Fund

le_loup

bowlhead you are a treasure to this board, your careful logic is such a tonic compared to some of the ranters and know-alls that come and go from time to time.



Trouble is dad, you've given me alternatives when I needed to be told what to do! Doh!


P. S., as I have said before, your typing skills are legend. <envy>

Mistermeaner

FYI just spoke to Charles Stanley (after woodford failed to get back to me after call this morning) and Charles Stanley dircet customers will be receiving an email tomorrow (thurs) regards how to apply for the initial share offer through them, and you wil be able to do so within an ISA wrapper.

Apols if this was obvious but I was confused!

TCA

ggb1979 wrote: »

FYI just spoke to Charles Stanley (after woodford failed to get back to me after call this morning) and Charles Stanley dircet customers will be receiving an email tomorrow (thurs) regards how to apply for the initial share offer through them, and you wil be able to do so within an ISA wrapper.

Apols if this was obvious but I was confused!

Thanks for posting. It isn't obvious to me who you can actually apply through, as most of those named on the Woodford site (as of yesterday), didn't have much info on their own websites, other than registering for more information. I guess they're just a bit slow.

The CSD website is now saying this:

"The offer period for the Trust runs from the 25th February 2015 and applications through your Charles Stanley Direct account must be made by Wednesday 8 April at 5pm. Dealing commences on 21 April 2015."

Not that it helps me any, I'm not a customer.

bowlhead99

Each of the platforms / brokers will be looking to collate their applications by a date that works for their systems and processes before sending them all in ahead of Woodford's own deadline.

If 8 April is indicative of the date the brokers are offering, there should be no problem doing a debit card deposit in the new tax year with funds cleared for either an ISA or a SIPP purchase - although with a SIPP you won't get your 20% gross-up added from HMRC in time, same as any IPO really.

If I buy it would likely be in my pension, the very definition of 'patient capital' with 20 years or so enforced for me!

20400keith

Interactive Investor states that applications close at 5pm on 14 April 2015. Minimum investment of £1000.


Factsheet, prospectus and a video of Neil on a settee can be accessed via the link below.


http://www.iii.co.uk/landing/woodford-patient-capital/documents

steelbru

HL says "Applications are expected to close at 5pm on 13 April 2015, but may close early without prior notice."

Is the warning about closing early something they just have to say but in all likelihood will never happen, or is it quite possible ?

Given other platforms don't seem to be issuing this warning then wondering how safe it is to leave this quite late, so as not to have money tied up not doing anything. Thinking first week of April.......

masonic

steelbru wrote: »

Is the warning about closing early something they just have to say but in all likelihood will never happen, or is it quite possible ?

Probably just clever marketing. Wouldn't be the first time I'd seen HL insisting customers hurry to take up an offer when in fact they have plenty of time.

Ryan_Futuristics

jimjames wrote: »

Be aware (if you weren't already) that a big name fund manager doesn't mean the investment will be an immediate success.

A few years back a well known fund manager with a 20 year record of growth launched a new investment trust that immediately went to a premium and additional shares were sold at a premium too.

Roll on a few months and the trust is at a significant discount as well as having dropped 20% on the launch price.

Was that Anthony Bolton's Fidelity China?

Healthily beating the index now - I just thought it was crazy people expected overnight results (including Bolton himself) ... Picking value over growth can see your portfolio hammered for the best part of a decade if markets aren't playing ball - but it tends to swing back your way eventually

I guess that's why Woodford's so keen to educate investors on 'patience' ... But I love the fact it doesn't have a benchmark ... It dispels the idea a fund manager is there simply to justify his fee and beat an equivalent tracker (which is why I think fund management got into the sorry state it did)

So I'd see it as a straight investment in UK smaller companies, and the investment team you'd probably want handling it

The biggest risk as I see it is this (whatever we've built through QE) coming toppling down around us as the Fed tries raising rates ... The big global slowdown we've been trying to stave off through QE may still need to play out

masonic

Ryan_Futuristics wrote: »

Was that Anthony Bolton's Fidelity China?

Healthily beating the index now - I just thought it was crazy people expected overnight results (including Bolton himself)

I seem to remember he had real problems with fraud in particular and admitted he went in and made some rather naive mistakes initially and changed his approach, in particular around due dilligence. Which is the problem with trying to apply that which was a successful strategy in one market to another. In this case, the hope is that Woodford and co. have sufficient experience in this area already not to be learning any lessons the hard way, but there is always a risk that a new launch like this will run into teething problems.

bowlhead99

He'll have done some of these deals before from time to time but presumably not at the same volumes. If he's going to deploy £100m in early stage and 50m in early growth, over the next two years, and presuming each deal will be relatively small, that is a lot of positions to build which means a lot of potential positions to evaluate to weed out the good ones.

We know he's held unquoted companies before - but not clear exactly how early stage his typical unquoted companies have been. The nature of early stage and early growth is pretty much the opposite of what you would put into an income fund. He was known for not being afraid to go a little 'off piste' of course, but still, if you're managing £20bn of Invesco Income / High Income, you are presumably not padding it out with £2m venture capital tickets that can't move the overall needle.

Its arguable that running a £200m fund of specialist deals isn't too much difference from running a £5-10bn fund with a token £200m as a 2-4% allocation to specialists. But in number of opportunities that need to be found, acquired and patiently monitored, it surely would be, because the holding size must surely be smaller. So I'd agree that a step off into a new type of fund is the kind of thing that it's quite possible to get wrong.

We hear a lot about Woodford the one-man-brand who is a celebrity manager - but while he acts as the figurehead for his new firm, the key for this new specialist firm will be what talent he's lined up to actually do the investment analysis and review what they're going to buy and when and for how long.