Woodford speaks

Dird

For those interested: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06tpcbd
Starts at 2:55

InvestInPoker

Thanks for that was a good listen.

As long as the companies are ethically run there's nothing wrong with owning shares in tobacco companies. The healthcare/cigarette maker combo is a bit lol but I can see why he's outperformed with those two as his biggest holdings since the year dot.

Interestingly I remember seeing him on hard talk a year ago where he said the Eurozone was basically unworkable. Seems to have become less hard line on that front now.

BrockStoker

InvestInPoker wrote: »

The healthcare/cigarette maker combo is a bit lol

Makes sense though. Sell them tobacco which makes a profit, and when they get ill from it make money from that too. All angles covered although it's hardly ethical!

zolablue25

I don't get why he is given a hard time about investing in tobacco companies. He makes no secret of it and if you don't like it then don't invest in his funds - there are plenty of funds that promote themselves as being "ethical". As he has pointed out many times his role is to make his investors money and if the best way of doing that is by buying tobacco stocks then so be it.

If it was really that much of a deal then all his investors would pull their money out and his fund would disappear so, obviously, there are a hell of a lot of people that aren't bothered about it ( me, for one).

bowlhead99

BrockStoker wrote: »

Makes sense though. Sell them tobacco which makes a profit, and when they get ill from it make money from that too. All angles covered although it's hardly ethical!

Quite legal though. He mentioned that his only regret was perhaps not having invested even more into tobacco over time.

Overall you want to have exposure to most or all sectors: if my manufacturing companies are getting squeezed because of high energy prices then my energy companies will be making the money; if my consumer products and media companies are having their business models ripped apart by disruptive technology my tech firms will be doing well; my logistics firms will have less mail to move because of prevalence of email which plays into the hands of my communications firms, but on the other hand they have more parcels to move from online shopping; my restaurants and breweries and tobacco make people fat and dilapidated until they can be customers no more... but my healthcare companies will have something to fix; when my healthcare companies do too good of a job of keeping people alive too long my care homes get more customers; when my care homes lose customers who reach their expiration dates, the funeral companies get something to do; when the funeral companies have finished with them we can call in M&S to cater the wake, and the heirs will hopefully use their inheritance to cheer themselves up and honour dear old Grandpa's memory by buying a mid-life-crisis car which requires steel and aluminium which helps the extractive industries, which in turn need oil and gas to power the drills and heat and light for the mines... and then we go round again.

And in a few million years time, dear old Grandpa has become landfill and turns into oil so that niche companies can come back to Earth from whereever the human race is living by then, extract it, and sell a cool 'retro' spaceship instead of one powered by whatever boring efficient method their rivals are using.

Or you could forget all that and as one savvy poster is doing, start a new thread to find out what shares MSE users are buying in 2016, and just copy them. I'm sure that'll end up just as good.

bigfreddiel

BrockStoker wrote: »

Makes sense though. Sell them tobacco which makes a profit, and when they get ill from it make money from that too. All angles covered although it's hardly ethical!

I would add British Aerospace to cover the arms angle, so all bases covered!

fj

george4064

Thanks for sharing.

bowlhead99

bigfreddiel wrote: »

I would add British Aerospace to cover the arms angle, so all bases covered!

fj

And not just BAE but also the large US listed firms like Lockheed, Raytheon, Northrop Grumman etc and their European and Asian listed equivalents. In the world of defence you don't just want to be aiming down your sights at some of the bases using some of the methods... taking sides will get you killed out there...