Woodford Concerns

dividendhero

LHW99 wrote: »

. I would suggest that replacing the / an electron in hydrogen / deuterium by a muon is theoretically possible in the same way time that travel faster than the speed of light is theoretically possible

Faster than light travel is impossible, it's not even theoretically possible.

Replacing electrons with muons and fusing them at room temperature was achieved decades ago. The technology isn't that complicated..only problem is it takes 5GeV to create a muon, and it'll give you back around half this in energy after fusion is achieved

Nobody is currently investigating muon induced fusion as an energy source, everyone's looking at various forms of hot fusion.

Think we both agree that Woodford's merry band at IH haven't achieved any breakthroughs :beer:

fun4everyone

cogito wrote: »

It's not clear to me why Fidelity should take it upon themselves to decide where their customers should invest their money (or not).

Perhaps they take the view that having the fund available for purchase on their platform is the most minor/smallest form of "recommendation". Having it for sale through them could at least be taken as Fidelity are saying this fund is not a complete scam/black hole. It's certainly possible that it might also gate in the near future which would make it a black hole for money.

AnotherJoe

cogito wrote: »

It's not clear to me why Fidelity should take it upon themselves to decide where their customers should invest their money (or not).

Platforms already make that choice for customers. In this case, It may be done altruistically or more likely with an eye on a future regulator ruling that says "you should have known this was an risky purchase so pay compo" or even "no investor in their right mind would buy more, they obviously meant sell and pressed the buy button by mistake so pay compo".

Reaper

masonic wrote: »

I've spent more time than I should, out of idle curiosity, trying to determine what if anything IH has been up to since the thoroughly debunked cold fusion experiments announced in 2016. So far I've come up with nothing. Ostensibly, they could have drawn a line under it and began building a portfolio of more credible energy technologies, but I can find no evidence of this.

Snap. They talk about a range of technologies but apart from the E-cat which predictably didn't work (and led to a falling out between Rossi and IH) it is unclear what else they have.

Link Fund Solutions (who do the valuations) marked value of IH up 357% in Sept 2018.
https://citywire.co.uk/investment-trust-insider/news/woodford-patient-leaps-on-spike-from-industrial-heat/a1157456

I would be fascinated to know what prompted this re-rating given the E-cat had already failed. What else do they have? If anything.

AnotherJoe

Possibly they found a way to package and reuse all the hot air generated by Link and Woodford.
Other than that I'd say its as simple as simple people having the wool pulled over their eyes by some very clever people. Plenty of precedents, Enron and Theranos spring to mind indeed the latter would seem to be a very close parallel with all the secrecy, utterly outlandish claims and FOMO driving investment.

bowlhead99

Reaper wrote: »

Snap. They talk about a range of technologies but apart from the E-cat which predictably didn't work (and led to a falling out between Rossi and IH) it is unclear what else they have.

Link Fund Solutions (who do the valuations) marked value of IH up 357% in Sept 2018.
https://citywire.co.uk/investment-trust-insider/news/woodford-patient-leaps-on-spike-from-industrial-heat/a1157456

I would be fascinated to know what prompted this re-rating given the E-cat had already failed. What else do they have? If anything.

The re rating would have been because of their raising further funds at a higher valuation, and that valuation (what someone will pay) being used in the assessment of what Woodford's piece is worth. It doesn't mean he can necessarily sell it for that value, because they are few buyers at any point in time, but it provides an indication of value, and based on accounting conventions, it shouldn't be outright ignored. Plenty of VC funds and early stage investors will write up their investments when there are transactions in those investments resulting in a new market value being established, whether or not they themselves are participating in the funding round.

If the value increase was due to a new funding round rather than the company achieving some fundamental milestone, and whether the price paid was a proper arms length value and how material it was in the context of the company's overall worth, is not known to me as I haven't gone into the detail.

When Rossi and IH had their falling out and went to court over it, before eventually settling, IH complained about a whole load of things including that they couldn't get Rossi's tech which they'd licensed to work at anything like his claimed results, and Rossi complained about a whole load of things including that the money that IH's parent co raised did not all go into testing/developing his stuff. (which from IH perspective was fine, because the parent co was under no obligation to give its money to IH to fund that particular project).

So, based on that particular bit of evidence from Rossi, IH's parent (into which Woodford invested) had lots of money (including follow-on commitments) which wasn't spent on the E-cat, but instead on research end engaging experts etc to pursue *other* potential things.

Those other things may ultimately result in dead ends or may have already resulted in dead ends, but based on the court documents it wasn't the case that the money was all spent on buying Rossi's failed tech.

AnotherJoe

Yep, its all sounding just like Theranos just before it imploded.

Reaper

bowlhead99 wrote: »

The re rating would have been because of their raising further funds at a higher valuation, and that valuation (what someone will pay) being used in the assessment of what Woodford's piece is worth.

That was certainly part of the reason, that others were willing to pay more. Though I do wonder if Woodford investing gave it respectability and in turn encouraged others to invest pushing demand and the value up. If so it could quickly reverse unless there is something substantive to back it up.

bowlhead99 wrote: »

So, based on that particular bit of evidence from Rossi, IH's parent (into which Woodford invested) had lots of money (including follow-on commitments) which wasn't spent on the E-cat, but instead on research end engaging experts etc to pursue *other* potential things.

Those other things may ultimately result in dead ends or may have already resulted in dead ends, but based on the court documents it wasn't the case that the money was all spent on buying Rossi's failed tech.

I agree completely, which is why I was wondering what those other projects are. However as far as I can see IH don't have a web site and there is no information out there on what they are working on which makes it hard to know if there is any real value or not.

bowlhead99

Reaper wrote: »

That was certainly part of the reason, that others were willing to pay more. Though I do wonder if Woodford investing gave it respectability and in turn encouraged others to invest pushing demand and the value up. If so it could quickly reverse unless there is something substantive to back it up.

Investors in a 'patient capital' trust don't really need to be concerned with whether an individual holding spikes up or quickly reverses, because they are happy to patiently hold it in the quest for some long term value... The short term value is only relevant if you want to transact

I agree completely, which is why I was wondering what those other projects are. However as far as I can see IH don't have a web site and there is no information out there on what they are working on which makes it hard to know if there is any real value or not.

Privately funded research groups which aren't offering investment opportunities to the public don't really have to let you know what their current projects are, or what their business is worth. Even if they did have some superficial summary about what lines of enquiry they were currently conducting in what specific field, you are not going to be able to put a pounds and pence value on it.

If you are an investor in WPCT , best just to think of its value within the next decade as being zero and perhaps get a nice surprise if it isn't.

If you're not an investor in WPCT thinking it's zero, keep thinking that and then perhaps eat your hat if it isn't, but meanwhile hope to make better money elsewhere.

Some in the latter camp would go as far as reviewing some press articles out of morbid curiosity and concluding that there is definitely no value because that particular investment is definitely all a fraud and by extension all of the rest of the NAV is probably a fiction because Woodford is a gullible mug and all the holders of the trust are buying a fantasy. Maybe those posters will help to talk the price down so I can top up well below 50p in a few months' time.

jamei305

I assume IH are prospective patent trolls, and will attempt to use the patents they are buying up to extract money from companies who may or may not be working on cold fusion.