If Neil Woodford had thrown darts at a wall covered with the names of potential investments, he would have been unlucky to have ended up buying some of the stinkers that litter his trio of portfolios.
Take the Woodford Patient Capital Trust. The fund’s premise is that those investing in it should take the long view; think at least a decade, not months, not years. Fair enough. Yet serious questions have been raised about some of Mr Woodford’s picks, most prominently of late Prothena, a drug developer that short-sellers claim is a giant turkey. The company’s shares, the trust’s second largest holding, have fallen by more than 40 per cent in the past three months, as the market appears to agree.
Then there is