Woodford Equity Income

frugal90

Not a lot happened in the last 12months, down 0.7%, where to next? Thoughts?

Frugal

digannio

I think it's meant to be for the long term rather than being judged on a matter of months during a period of volatility.

jimjames

Considering the UK market is down about 14% it's done pretty well I think. But as above it's very short term to review over

bowlhead99

Assuming you invested this time last year, you'd be down 6% after about 4 months (late August), but if you had invested then you'd have gained 10% in about three months to the beginning of December, but if you'd have invested at the beginning of December you'd then have lost a bit more than 11% over the next two and a bit months to early Feb, but then it went back up again.

So overall, nothing much happened because the end point is pretty much where it started at the end of last April, but you might be happier or sadder than that depending on where you came in or went out.

The IA UK equity income sector as a whole was down 12% from a year ago at one point, while the UK All Companies was down 15%, but both ended up recovering most of that and so only lost about 3-5% for the entire year.

If you look at Woodford's portfolio contribution analysis for the year to March 31st you can see where fortunes could have been made or lost if you had a rather less diversified portfolio, with some tech or bio/healthcare companies down 50-80% with others across a variety of sectors up by a similar amount. Standout good calls included Reynolds with an average weight of 3.75% of the portfolio delivering over 50% and Imperial Brands at double that weight doing 30%+.

I think he seems to know what he's doing, although you can see that if you take some of the unquoted holdings out of the portfolio, he would have had a worse result - so arguably he has only beaten the equity income sector as a whole by taking more riskier holdings on than average, but getting it right. Such calls helped the performance of his Inv Perp income funds in the old days too.

As for 'where next' though, who knows. No doubt the same places as the last year, and other places too.

jimjames wrote: »

Considering the UK market is down about 14% it's done pretty well I think. But as above it's very short term to review over

Neither the FTSE100 or all share - which are heavily weighted to some badly performing sectors - have lost as much as 10% on a total return basis for the last year to today, so I think that's giving him rather more credit than is due.

Agreed though, that the timescale is too short to be meaningful.

Big_Bad_Bob

Question: Is the Woodford Equity Income fund available inside a simple ISA wrapper for regular contributions?

After having my fingers burned somewhat in the early 2000s, I've since been a bit reluctant to dip back into equities outside of my pensions, and have instead built up savings via the cash ISA route.

After a possible house move later in the tax year however, I'm looking in this direction again once I know what outgoings will be thereafter, and the Woodford Equity Income fund is one that attracts me.

I'd anticipate having approximately £250 - £400 / month to invest. Anyone know if this is possible via an ISA, and if so, where might be the cheapest place to invest?

Thanks.

Kendall80

Big_Bad_Bob wrote: »

Question: Is the Woodford Equity Income fund available inside a simple ISA wrapper for regular contributions?

After having my fingers burned somewhat in the early 2000s, I've since been a bit reluctant to dip back into equities outside of my pensions, and have instead built up savings via the cash ISA route.

After a possible house move later in the tax year however, I'm looking in this direction again once I know what outgoings will be thereafter, and the Woodford Equity Income fund is one that attracts me.

I'd anticipate having approximately £250 - £400 / month to invest. Anyone know if this is possible via an ISA, and if so, where might be the cheapest place to invest?

Thanks.

Yes it is available in an ISA wrapper for monthly investing. CSD is likely to be among the cheapest providers at 0.25% (+ the fund fee of 0.75%)


While this appears a good fund (albeit based on a short time period thus far) I'd suggest adding other funds / sectors for diversification.

Big_Bad_Bob

Excellent. Thanks for your swift response. CSD - Charles Stanley Direct?

And yes, the original investment that scared me off equities in the first place has since recovered reasonably well, and this would be a first step towards diversification. At first glance, CSD looks like it would make it fairly straightforward to develop that further.

AlanP_2

Big_Bad_Bob wrote: »

Excellent. Thanks for your swift response. CSD - Charles Stanley Direct?

And yes, the original investment that scared me off equities in the first place has since recovered reasonably well, and this would be a first step towards diversification. At first glance, CSD looks like it would make it fairly straightforward to develop that further.

What was the original investment that it sounds like you still have?

Just checking where you are going with diversification as if the existing fund is UK largish equities then adding Woodford EI won't diversify it very much if at all. In the main he cherry picks the large / medium UK listed companies he likes the look of (and does it fairly well TBH) so you might be doubling up on those and concentrating risk as opposed to spreading it.

Big_Bad_Bob

That's a fair point, Alan.

It's a FTSE All Share Tracker, currently valued at some way shy of a 5 figure sum.

My initial thought was that going to an actively managed fund would provide some initial diversification against a fund merely tracking an index, and I would look to diversify outside of the UK after a year or so of contributions to the Woodford fund.

Would you suggest diversifying sooner than that?

atush

And what was the yield over the period? did you forget to add that in?

talexuser

atush wrote: »

And what was the yield over the period? did you forget to add that in?

I bought ACC at 99.14 in Jun 2014, now 119.07 makes it just over 20% for that period.