Reply To: Carillion

[Simon Woods]

Thanks. No hard feelings I hope. All I was trying to say in essence was that when there is clearly a veritable Tsunami of heavy weight shorting by powerful hedge funds and the like (equivalent they say to over 25% of Carillion’s value and even now most of the shorters scarily have not yet closed their positions so they expect the stock to fall even further) going on against a particular stock for many months on end then there’s usually a good reason for it and it shouldn’t be ignored. Such facts are surely relevant in investing, even when taking the long view – in terms of research etc -to an expert such as yourself? It was not mere market noise but a very concerted attack on that particular stock putting investors at risk and we should have been warned of that. It merited special investigation. I agree and by and large support your investment approach (although not to the point of dogma) as I have said before but I was merely talking about that one stock…there was no need for us to have such a general debate on principles all of which I broadly accept anyway and btw the insults seemed to have been mutual to me – since you accused me of “innumeracy”! however please accept my apologies for the tone of some of my comments – I was and am nursing a significant probably permanent loss and was feeling sore. As for capital versus income, well we have lost both in the case of Carilion haven’t we – with a vengeance.

Ends.