Friday Email: 13 December 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:

It has been a pretty torrid week on the markets with the FTSE 100 falling almost 150 points during the week. After a quiet start on Monday we had a very good day for dividends on Tuesday with our ex dividend of the week Photo-me delivering a promise of at least two further 20% dividend increases over the next two years. This, in addition to the 20% increase this year which was also accompanied with a special dividend. Additionally on Tuesday Ashtead increased its interim by 50%; Victrex increased its final by 15% and TUI increased its final dividend by 17%.

We still see a decent market over the next 2-6 weeks but we are very cautious of the next year as a whole particularly in the US where the S&P 500 has gone up in pretty much a straight line. It will not be so easy next year.

Finally, spare a thought for Imagination Technologies who have paid the price for trying to invest in their business at the expense of short term profitability. The markets do not like what they have done and the shares have been absolutely slaughtered to the point now where a takeover now seems inevitable. It would be a shame to see such great British technology fall into foreign hands, but it now looks likely.

This email was originally sent on Friday 13 December 2013

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.

It’s included as part of the free DividendMax trial.