Friday Email: 01 November 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:
The market is difficult to call right now with the FTSE 100 rising strongly from 6337 to 6777 from the 9th to 30th October, which is almost 7% in three weeks. Yesterday saw some profit taking and it is very difficult to say where the market is going right now. Taking decisive action is difficult, but it has to be worth having some cash in case there is a serious bout of profit taking before the expected run up towards the end of the year.
Very little happened last week although the call in the oil majors between Royal Dutch Shell and BP was definitely won by BP according to the markets as BP rose after its Q3 results and Royal Dutch Shell fell. Both increased their dividends by similar amounts at sround 5%.
The week ahead is looking much busier than we have seen in recent weeks with some big companies reporting such as Associated British Foods, Marks and Spencer, Imperial Tobacco, Experian, Tate & Lyle and plenty of smaller companies too. A large number of companies go ex-dividend this coming Wednesday including BP, Bunzl, Ashmore, Barclays, Whitbread, Unilever and Laird to name a few.
Ashmore look like a possible case for a dividend capture exercise, having fallen most of last week on no news and they go ex-dividend in the week ahead for 11.75p which is almost 3%. Centaur Media are offering a similar return.
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: 25 October 2013
The stock market has gone pretty much as we thought it would this time last week and has resumed the bull run with the FTSE 100 now above 6700 having risen over 6% since the US budget mini crisis. The next target is the years high of 6803, which we believe will be achieved, certainly by the year end, but it could come sooner than that. The big worry of 'the end of QE' seems to have gone for now at least and so the main hurdle for the bulls effectively went with the US jobs numbers this past week. We are expecting a new all time high for the FTSE 100 by the end of the year, but, as always, it will not go up in a straight line.
