Food for thought, page-8

Jam31 - I think your post was outstanding. I understood everything you said in that and had that in mind when I bought in. I reduced my holding by half late last year but really once I got uncomfortable with the company should have sold out. I reduced that to around 10% of my initial holding after the May performance. I note you don't comment on that.

I suppose that in fact it is what surprised me - I had thought I was wrong in my exit after the April performance thinking that it was back on track and then May. That really hurt. The market went up they went down. That really seemed to seal it for me. If you have taken this long to start turning the corner to bomb out in May with what is almost a 1% difference seemed to me to be very worrying and then the comment from edshann about the way the meeting went.

I really worry when the team leader wants to get out as quickly as possible. I have done a fair amount of work with turnarounds and you can often see that make a few changes and the team sees issues very differently. I once worked for a group that refused to do team building exercises and encouraged us to socialise outside of the colleagues we worked with - they had a view that too much interaction in the same team created a team that dealt with problems in a way that became the same over time. It was almost this is ... our way - that can be good in great times - which we must not forget ALF has had but may not work in bad times as cracks or change requires a different plan.

I must say I made some of my own very bad mistakes on this one. Held far too long before it surfacing to a level that I decided to be in or out. Lost some money on the way as I exercised the options and sold below...

I also think one has to look at the impact that this years performance will have. I cannot see that they can pay any dividends after the final and then it would be unwise to pay an interim if they haven't wiped out the losses they have incurred this year.

The one thing that has not been discussed is that I bought ALF to be following market direction and also had WMK for a neutral approach. suddenly I had two funds both neutral ( yes I understand the issue that its not truly neutral). I could understand it but I had been a little unhappy with WMK's performance as well.

I have such a small holding now I will await direction to decide further but want to say your post really put the argument forward about how we perceive risk and how a simple statement in its purest form can be hugely misleading. Thanks for that