Friday Email: 11 October 2013
Every Friday morning our lead analyst Mark Riding sends out his weekly run-down and upcoming events in the investor calendar, like this one:
As we predicted, although the last week had very little in the way of corporate news, it was an eventful week as stocks continued their falls from the previous week. However, it was all change on Thursday as talk of a deal between the factions in the US hit the wires. This resulted in a huge 323 point rise in the Dow on Thursday. There were just two FTSE 350 companies reporting and WH Smith outperformed N Brown group in the dividend department with a 15% increase in the final dividend compared to 4% for Brown. I always keep an eye on N Brown having worked there for 4 years in the 1980's. They have done well.
Another quiet week on the reporting front will see Bellway and Booker announce final and interim results respectively. The following week is much busier with plenty of companies reporting their numbers to the market.
It is difficult to say what will happen with the situation in the U.S, except to make the observation that the solution each time seems to be to be the same, i.e. not the answer, so we are destined to see this issue re-emerging again in the future. Meanwhile, if the markets yesterday are to be believed, the sticking plaster will be applied in order to buy more time for talks. We would still urge caution as more twists are possible, but it looks as though the QE fuelled bull market will resume in the not too distant future.
The Friday email is delivered to over 20,000 subscriber’s every week, and remains a widely read run-down of recent events and what investors can expect in the week ahead written by our chief analyst Mark Riding.
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Read next: 04 October 2013
Our recent cautious stance on the market has been vindicated this week as stock markets around the globe have come under pressure as the US politicians wrestle once again with US budget woes and debt ceilings. A quiet week on the results front with Wolseley increasing its dividend 10% and announcing a special dividend (details to follow). Tesco's 25 year record of increasing the dividend seems like a distant memory as the interim dividend was held for the second year running. James Halstead, another of the 25 year dividend champions did not disappoint with a 9.1% dividend increase. The star performer of the week was Ted Baker who surprised wth a 20% increase in the interim dividend.