Woodford Concerns

Thrugelmir

Seabee42 wrote: »

I think that says a lot about the opportunity set for UK listed companies.

Amazon took many years to gain traction. Who ever funded the company in the early stage years had very deep pockets.

londoninvestor

EdGasketTheSecond wrote: »

Yes there is; I can vouch from personal experience unfortunately!


Edinburgh New Tiger Trust continually crashed, then morphed into some kind of 'high yield' split cap fund, then went bust. I lost it all.

That was an IT though, and the capital structure can be more complex - i.e. there can be share classes which have no claim on the asset base unless it exceeds £X. So the assets of the trust can still be worth something, whilst the shares in those classes become worthless.

With OEICs like Woodford Income there isn't a "split cap" concept, so each unit gets an equal proportion of the NAV. As long as the assets are worth something, the units are too.

Thrugelmir

cogito wrote: »

But Equity Income funds aren’t supposed to hold start up businesses which haven’t got profits to pay dividends.

Suspect that many didn't read the very clear labels on the tin. As includes.

Who is the fund not suitable for?

- Investors who do not wish to be exposed to unquoted securities.

Alz1986

Unless you truely understand and believe in the phillsophy of the fund, there is nothing wrong with bailing out and putting your money elsewhere.

I learned the hard way that it is best to go with passive trackers until you see a decent return, only then you can start being mentally ready to lose money with the Woodfords and Baillie Giffords of the world.

Johnnyboy11

It beggars belief how badly the Woodford fund is performing. YTD it has lost 18.5%, whilst Fundsmith and Lindsell Train gained 17.6% and 20.5% respectively. Thats a near 40% delta between the most popular funds on the HL website and a staggering sum of money given the current £4.3Bn fund size.

Luckily I sold out completely in early Feb at 113.6, and missed the subsequent 10% drop in price. Moved into VLS60, passives for me from now on.

fun4everyone

Article in FT today, St James are "stepping up their scrutiny"

https://www.ft.com/content/376babfa-7d71-11e9-81d2-f785092ab560

fun4everyone

And this article is a good one, giving some clarity and figures into the Hargreaves Lansdown/Woodford relationship. It's quite staggering how much he now relies on them

https://citywire.co.uk/funds-insider/news/woodford-needs-hargreaves-lansdown-now-more-than-ever/a1208124

cogito

fun4everyone wrote: »

Article in FT today, St James are "stepping up their scrutiny"

https://www.ft.com/content/376babfa-7d71-11e9-81d2-f785092ab560

Paywalled. Can you post the text?

fun4everyone

cogito wrote: »

Paywalled. Can you post the text?

That's not allowed, however try a different browser or incognito mode - searching google for it and clicking that way.

eskbanker

fun4everyone wrote: »

cogito wrote: »

Paywalled. Can you post the text?

That's not allowed, however try a different browser or incognito mode - searching google for it and clicking that way.

Yes, going via Google makes the difference - for this and any other FT articles, if you copy/paste the article title (i.e. "Woodford feels heat as St James’s steps up scrutiny" in this case) into Google, it provides a link to ft.com that is accessible to non-subscribers....

ft4everyone