Patience may be a virtue for Woodford investors

IT has gone from bad to worse for anyone with money in Neil Woodford’s much trumpeted Patient Capital Trust fund.

Investors already had good reason to feel aggrieved at returns failing to live up to the star stockpicker’s reputation.

Then last week it turned into a farce when it emerged FTSE Russell, part of the London Stock Exchange, had accidentally promoted it to the FTSE 250 index at the start of the month. That meant index tracker funds automatically bought into the shares. Now they will be forced to sell out when it is removed on Tuesday.

Activist investor Richard Bernstein, who runs the Crystal Amber fund, reckons it will cost investors ‘several hundred thousand pounds’. Woodford admitted in last week’s Mail on Sunday the past two years have been his ‘most difficult period’.

Bad bets on some blue-chip firms such as Provident Financial and the AA hit his funds last year. And it has been a similar tale this year for Woodford Patient Capital Trust, which listed in 2015.

But patience can be a virtue. Shares in Autolus Therapeutics – a London-based firm developing blood cancer treatments – have more than doubled since floating in New York in June and surged 14 per cent on Friday. Woodford Patient Capital Trust has a 15 per cent stake so investors may see a boost this week.