Woodford Equity Income Fund Suspends Trading

[ArriusLion22]

Fairly New investor here (6 months). Just bought Lindsell Train, Royal Sterling High Yield Income and Newton (now called BNY Mellon) ... nearly bought Woodford, and was nearly turned on by Hargreave Lansdown's new HL Select Growth fund they've been pushing down my throat since May.

Worried now. Funds used to be safer than Shares but theyonly seem to list their Top 10 holdings, and you can't see what illiquid unquoted compaanies they've also invested in..

[UncleEbenezer]

Fairly New investor here (6 months). Just bought Lindsell Train, Royal Sterling High Yield Income and Newton (now called BNY Mellon) ... nearly bought Woodford, and was nearly turned on by Hargreave Lansdown's new HL Select Growth fund they've been pushing down my throat since May.

Worried now. Funds used to be safer than Shares but theyonly seem to list their Top 10 holdings, and you can't see what illiquid unquoted compaanies they've also invested in..

Funds still are safer than shares. In the extreme case of Woodford, his investors will get back more than those in Carillion or Thomas Cook, to name but two.

Funds are also generally fairly explicit about their investment mandate. Most invest in highly liquid assets - assets traded on the LSE or similar exchanges abroad - and even those carry liquidity warnings. Woodford was clear and open about treading a different and higher-risk path: an investment that looked rather like Venture Capital. Read your funds' risk warnings if in doubt: they'll mention liquidity.

[fisher]

Fairly New investor here (6 months). Just bought Lindsell Train, Royal Sterling High Yield Income and Newton (now called BNY Mellon) ... nearly bought Woodford, and was nearly turned on by Hargreave Lansdown's new HL Select Growth fund they've been pushing down my throat since May.

Worried now. Funds used to be safer than Shares but theyonly seem to list their Top 10 holdings, and you can't see what illiquid unquoted compaanies they've also invested in..

Look at the Trusts annual report - it almost always lists all the holdings. Links to the annual & interim reports are usually at the bottom of the Investment Trust's Hargreaves Lansdown page amongst other places.

[funduffer]

A disaster in the fund world, no doubt.

My performance with this fund:

First purchased:2014
All dividends received and re-invested up to 2019
Most capital returned in 2020
A small residual value still to be returned.

Total return= -7.2%
XIRR= -1.5%

Not good, but hardly a disaster compared to some of my individual stocks (including CLLN)

[UncleEbenezer]

A disaster in the fund world, no doubt.

My performance with this fund:

First purchased:2014
All dividends received and re-invested up to 2019
Most capital returned in 2020
A small residual value still to be returned.

Total return= -7.2%
XIRR= -1.5%

Not good, but hardly a disaster compared to some of my individual stocks (including CLLN)

Just out of idle curiosity (I never held), might that have looked a great deal worse for other purchase dates, perhaps a little later than 2014?

I imagine a fund specialising in the travel&leisure sector might look a lot worse than that right now. The individual stocks certainly do.

[funduffer]

A disaster in the fund world, no doubt.

My performance with this fund:

First purchased:2014
All dividends received and re-invested up to 2019
Most capital returned in 2020
A small residual value still to be returned.

Total return= -7.2%
XIRR= -1.5%

Not good, but hardly a disaster compared to some of my individual stocks (including CLLN)

Just out of idle curiosity (I never held), might that have looked a great deal worse for other purchase dates, perhaps a little later than 2014?

The price history since 2014 is unexceptional. I bought into the fund at around £1 per unit, and the peak price was £1.27 per unit in 2017, after which it has seen a decline and then it's dramatic collapse. Clearly, buying at the peak would have resulted in worse performance, but probably not that much worse.

FD.

[terminal7]

Hargreaves Lansdown said it made a good start to the financial year as the investment platform reported £0.8bn of net new business and revenue up 12% in the first quarter. Revenue rose to £143.7m from £128.1m in the three months to the end of September. 8/10/20

Clearly HL have not 'suffered' any long-term reputational decline from this episode. Mark Dampier has gone into well-earned semi-retirement and all swept under the carpet.

T7