Neil Woodford’s woes
There is a whole ton of news today on Neil Woodford, the ex-Invesco star fund manager who has been suffering with rough performance of late.
Funds outflows have been sizeable, with his funds under management now £3.7bn versus the £10.2bn he had at its peak in May 2017.
His funds have taken some massive hits due to disastrous performances from stocks including Kier, Provident Financial and Purplebricks and he’s had to ban fund outflows for the moment to give him a chance to sell off illiquid and unquoted stocks from the fund.
Investors are naturally angry, but Woodford just has to do this otherwise things would just get even worse.
I mentioned this today because of the amount of press it’s getting, but ultimately it’s just about a fund manager who’s had some bad performance – and that happens to everyone because no-one wins ALL of the time.
Still, he is probably the UK’s most well-known fund manager, so the higher their profile, the harder they fall.
The success of meat substitutes
The other thing I wanted to talk about today was the success of meat substitutes.
Basically, it seems that the uptake of meat-alternatives continues to rise strongly over in the US.
According to research from a company called Technomic, 15% of US restaurants offered meatless burgers in March versus only 3% a year earlier.
With increased uptake from chains such as White Castle, TGI Fridays and Red Robin Gourmet Burgers, meatless burger producers Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods are struggling to keep up with demand.
Although production costs are still high, I would have thought they will go down over time as producers scale up – but in the meantime, meatless “hype” has almost quadrupled Beyond Meat’s share price since its flotation last month.
Although cynics say that this it’s all a fad, I really think that when you’ve got a product that is healthier, better for the environment and tastes this good, you just can’t ignore the potentially massive size of this market.
