[Robert Synge]

My view is that the Dividend Letter’s policy of strategic ignorance is shown to be a major policy flaw.
The bottom line with Carillion is that we are all going to lose all of our our investment – either by the company being wound up or by being diluted to virtually zero by a massive government rights issue.
Many of us subscribe to the DL because we hope that, by doing so, the investment return should be better than if we do it ourselves but when the letter’s policy is one of complete indifference about a company’s financial statistics and no sell advice is ever given despite a company being clearly bankrupt, this is bordering on the negligent.
Carillion have been in trouble for some time and a responsible policy would have been to advise investors to sell when we still had a chance of getting out with some of our investment intact. As it is, by recommending to hold the share forever, we are losing 100% which could easily have been avoided.
Of course investors realise that sometimes share advice has to change when a company’s fundamentals change but to stick your head in the sand and claim that ignoring all news and update scenarios is wrong is simply poor advice.
I will keep subscribing to DL as I think the portfolio compilation and weighting is helpful but, from now on, I will be doing my own research before blindly following the writer’s advice.
No doubt Mr Bland will come on here with a strong rebuttal as I have noticed from previous posts that he does not take kindly to any perceived criticism but a policy of learning from one’s mistakes and improving the advice quality going forwards would surely be seen as helpful by all subscribers.

As to the subscriber who has just bought into Carillion, that is an extremely brave move and hard to see how it will pay off. Good luck in any event.
R.S.

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