By Tom Winnifrith | Sunday 25 February 2018
"Why Woodford has NOT lost his magic touch... despite UK's star stock picker seeing a series of huge bets going wrong spectacularly". So screams the headline on a leading article by Paul Thomas in the Daily Mail. I suppose it depends on how you define magic? If you mean it is making things ( like other people's money) disappear then indeed, Nomates is still the King. Why was this article written?
Is it because Woodford has advertised in the Mail very heavily and somehow gets payback in his hour of need? Did Thomas owe Woodford's PR folks a big favour? Or is he just thick as pig shit? The aim of the piece was clear: get new investors into the Woodford Funds or at least stem the flow of rejections. It is nothing more than propaganda. Goebbels would be proud.
Scratching around for experts to explain why backing all the wrong stocks did not mean that Woodford was not still a genius, poor Thomas had a problem. He found two (Jason Hollands of BestInvest and Ben Yearsley of adviser Shore Financial Planning) neither of whom were prepared to say that folks would stick in new money, indeed Yearsley explicitly said he is advising against that. But both are prepared to hold for now. But they are the (relative) bulls.
No mention in the article is made of the disastrous performance of the Woodford Patient Capital Trust (WPCT) but even pathetic Paul can't hide the negative returns of the main Equity Income Fund. No mention is made of the dynamite revelation HERE that in order to fund redemptions in January Woodford's flagship fund had to rack up a £45 million overdraft.
But it seems that Daily Mail readers are not fooled and, indeed, are angry. Clearly at least some have read Cynical Bear's series of dynamite exposes of disastrous Woodford stock picks and the mess he is in with regard to his unquoted holdings on this website HERE. The hostility of Mail readers implies that the wave of redemptions is only just beginning and could soon become a Tsunami forcing Nomates to sell his most liquid - and least worst performing - holdings.
It is worth reading both the nauseating article and the comments that follow to get an idea of what is really going on.
Meanwhile Paul Thomas: you are a disgrace to your profession.
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