@ArrowTrades @Bear77 Arrow is right, their published results are not meaningful. I went to an ASA forum a couple of months ago where the PM admitted it was marketing (at least he is honest). LIC are high-cost franked dividend transferring mechanisms. i wouldn't bother with them unless they trade 30% below NTA with a feasible way out.

the real measurement of performance in monitoring NTA which considers all fees and is usually (should be) marked to market.

for the life of me i can't understand how popular LICs are in retail land, almost every retail investor has them, no insto guys, GW has done a spectacular job.

i ran one for several years and wasn't impressed with the proposition but to each their own.

Thanks for the feedback @ArrowTrades and @Solvetheriddle - Two points:

1. WLE seriously underperformed the ASX200 (their benchmark) over FY24 which has dragged their average return back - this has resulted in a drop in their SP from $1.50 twelve months ago to now around $1.30, and I purchased them for below that recently. If you did the same graph in Sharesight 12 months ago, I believe WLE would look better, however I don't want to own the index (via an ETF) at this point because I agree with Matt and John that the banks in general - and CBA in particular at around 3.5 x book value - are seriously overbought and while WLE do hold them purely for risk management purposes, they are underweight the banks compared to the index and are starting to increase exposure to resources. They even bought a small MinRes position in the past week - this is all from yesterday's webinar that I linked to in my straw. I think that WLE has a very good chance of significantly outperforming the index over the next year or two, even if their AFTER fee returns have been less than the ETF tracking their benchmark. This probable future near-term / mid-term outperformance in my view is because they see fund flows from outside of Australia, particularly from China, recently and currently building up our bank valuations and companies like Wesfarmers, and they believe a rotation is inevitable and they believe they will see it when it happens and position for it immediately. What hurt them most over the last year was one really poor company, Star Entertainment Group (SGR) - which is currently suspended from trading for not lodging their FY24 report by the due date (end of August). WLE still hold SGR, so I'd be looking to see the issues with that company resolve - Star have new management, but still plenty of problems. WLE's second major underperformer was Orora - which finished FY24 down below $2 but is now up around $2.60/share after selling their North American packaging business for more than the market had expected they would get for it - so ORA is coming good for them in the past few weeks alone. In summary, I ackowledge that their after fee returns are much more meaningful, and it's something they SHOULD report, rather than leave us to work it out ourselves, but looking forward instead of backwards, I think buying WLE at below $1.30/share after a poor year of underperformance vs their benchmark - their first bad year like that since inception - is a bet that I'm willing to take - that they are due to revert to outperforming over the next 12 to 24 months, so I believe the downside is limited here compared to other options (like holding ETFs that are marketweight banks).
2. Their dividend income has been higher than their index, and they have over 3 years worth of dividends already in their profit reserve, and that's the number one reason why I hold a large WLE position, for the income stream. One of the questions that the lads (Matt and John) were asked yesterday was "Do you think the WLE share price would drop if you reduced the dividend?" They both immediately said "Yes!" and then said that while dividends were a Board decision and they couldn't speak for the Board, they did not anticipate the dividend would be cut considering their very healthy profit reserve balance. Matt even mentioned that it would be reasonable for shareholders to have that expectation of maintained or increased dividends over the next few years because "even if you think we can't make ANY profits during that time, we still have enough in the profit reserve to cover those dividends." So I'm certainly comforted by that being underlined yesterday.

In terms of your comments, true, the numbers don't lie - WLE has clearly underperformed AFTER fees since inception, however not by a lot, and they still have a good team there that consistently outperform their benchmark BEFORE fees - except during FY24 - but in terms of positioning and having the right attitude to the rediculous premiums being paid for companies like CBA currently, and the rotation out of banks that could (and should) be coming once overseas investors see viable alternatives within the ASX for Australian sharemarket exposure, I like WLE here, at this point in time.

As I have said, I haven't held them for a couple of years up until very recently, and I will probably sell them if a number of things occur, including if they start trading at a significant premium to NTA again (currently trading at a discount to NTA) - so I'm not a die-hard fan of LICs now, or of WLE in particular, but I think Matt, John, and their team at WLE are one of the better teams in the LIC game, even though their returns tables and announcements are dictated by Wilson's (WAM's) policy of not providing after fee returns numbers - Geoff did provide after-fee returns data for his LICs 10 years ago and said that LICs who only gave before-fee returns numbers to their shareholders were not treating their shareholders with the respect they deserved as owners of the company, but he changed his tune on that, and is now doing the exact thing he used to criticise others for doing, and he runs WAM Funds - so while WLE has their own portfolio management team, their reporting format is dictated by WAM Funds, who they work for, and WAM Funds do charge high fees, especially their performance fees.

So, good that you've pointed that historical after-fees underperformance out @ArrowTrades and @Solvetheriddle - to balance my talking my book up in terms of WLE being my largest real-life position at this point in time, and why. Balance is good. That's the other side of this coin clearly. However, I'm still comfortable with owning 100,000 WLE shares at this point in time, and there was nothing in yesterday's webinar that worries me from a portfolio management and PM competence POV.

In short, for me, in my current circumstance, WLE provides me with as close as I can get to a highly-probable 7%+ yield on my investment over the next 18 months - or +10% including the full value of the franking credits - which I can use. And that's all just via their dividends. Sure, their share price could go down during that period, but if I don't sell at lower levels and wait for them to come back to at least my buy price before exiting, I will have achieved that income objective, which is actually my main aim with holding WLE over the next 18 months to 2 years. I believe that holding an ASX-200 hugging ETF may well provide me with less income over the same period but with similar downside risks.

@Bear77 good luck to you, i hope they do a good job for you

Additional: One more unrelated point, Matt and John were asked in the webinar yesterday why they were currently overweight resources according to their sector charts in their recent presentations, and they said that actually they were NOT overweight resources, they were underweight resources but increasing their exposure to resources gradually, but that their charts/tables showed them as overweight MATERIALS compared to the index and Materials include companies like Orora (ORA) who are packaging manufacturers, not miners, so they said the sectors were a little misleading in that regard. Page 22 of their Annual Report shows that their largest sector exposure was to Materials at 26.2% vs the benchmark at 20.7%, but that Materials include more than mining, so in terms of mining they were not overweight - yet. But expected to be once the tide of inflows into the Australian Banking Sector turns, which they believe is inevitable at some point because of how overbought the banks have become.

They also said that they expect to outperform regardless of a hard or soft landing in the USA or Australia and gave reasons for that belief. The webinar went for almost 2 hours and over half of that was Q&A, so worth listening to if anybody is interested in either WLE or Matt Haupt's and John Ayoub's views on the macro as well as individual stocks - they even talked about what gold companies they were holding (no spoilers). They said they were - or had been - think they still are - overweight gold - but underweight all other mining commodities exposure, and that their overweight gold exposure had been good for them recently.

OK, maybe just one spoiler: They do hold Genesis Minerals (GMD) - which I did not expect. And NST - which I DID expect. I hold both of those companies. They have also held (and probably still hold) NEM and EVN (to be expected, being the Aussie gold sector's #1 and #3 companies by market cap), and believe that for gold to outperform from here there is now only a narrow path between a hard and soft landing that favours gold - like a "Goldilocks scenario" - not too hot, not too cold, but I don't hold WLE for their expertise on the gold sector to be honest. Am encouraged that they hold GMD however, an emerging gold producer who have yet to hit their straps in terms of production, and are arguably expensive for what they are today - but reasonably priced for what they should be in a couple of years' time.

I think WLE have and will continue to fall into the category most fund mangers fall into IMO. Create a little bit of gross Alpha and then take it all for themselves via fees. Leaving the investor either very similar or even worse off than the index.

My stomach churns watching all these fundies making many millions for this "service."

Indeed @ArrowTrades. A fun book on the topic...That's almost 100 years old. Meanwhile that clown Geoff Wilson is all over Twitter posting Buddha quotes about giving.