Friday Email: 22 August 2014
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 past week has seen the markets pick up and August is suddenly not looking so bad as the FTSE 100 has risen 40 points on the month so far; not that we have seen much in the way of dividend growth from companies reporting. We did see a massive rise from Bovis Homes of 200% which takes it back to what it was paying pre financial crisis and John Wood Group did not disappoint with a solid 25% dividend increase. BHP increased its dividend by 4% and Glencore by 11%. High yielding Phoenix group which is top of the Optimizer for UK stocks maintaned its dividend at 26.7p whilst reducing debt considerably making future returns from dividends look pretty safe.
The week ahead starts slowly on Monday with no companies that we cover reporting but then there is a busy four days to follow. Friday sees Cathay International, one of our small cap picks for the year report its interim results and we expect them to be 'fruitful' to use the company's parlance. It has been good to see the recovery of Easyjet which we think is a top company and see no reason why it should not return to recent highs over the next six months.
Brockenhurst is proving to be a fantastic place to live and the disruption has been worth it as we moved from South East to South West making it difficult to perform Divi Max duties, but on the other hand I am starting to feel very relaxed and the local mountain bike rides are spectacular with the terrain being no more than undulating. Thats what a man of 50 needs. My king of the mountain days are over!!
The market is still, in our view, very difficult but we do expect a positive end for the year at around the 7000 mark on the FTSE 100.
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.
Read next: 15 August 2014
A nice quiet day on the corporate front is welcome today as I moved to Brockenhurst on Wednesday and have been struggling to get work done with the turmoil of moving. I have an autistic son who lives nearby and my youngest son got into Kings college, London yesterday to study philosophy. I showed him the great Monty Python sketch with the philosophers playing football the other week which he found very amusing.