Friday Email: 20 February 2015

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 continues to hold steady near all time highs in spite of the situation in Greece, with the markets waiting on the outcome of the finance ministers meeting this afternoon. Expect a volatile run up as rumours and counter rumours surrounding the outcome hit the market. The outcome is difficult to predict, but I would expect some sort of compromise to help the new government of Greece and avoid a situation that might spread across the Eurozone. Especially at a time where the green shoots of economic recovery in the Eurozone are beginning to emerge. Also the uncertainty created by a Greek exit would be a slap in the face to the Spanish, Irish and the Portugese who have suffered great austerity themselves. So I would expect a very small token, but not too much.

The past week saw very good dividend increases from two of our former 'dividends of the week' namely Galliford Try and John Wood Group. Intercontintal Hotels also managed its usual solid increase although there was no special dividend announced this year as yet after three in each of the past three years. The special dividends tend to be dependent upon asset sales. Centrica shareholders will be very disappointed by the rebasing of the dividend. Many would have seen it as a solid income play. 

The week ahead is incredibly busy with plenty of companies reporting every day from Monday to Friday. Usually Monday and Friday are quiet but not this coming week. Some of the heavyweights reporting include HSBC, BHP Billiton, GKN, Man Group, Weir, British American Tobacco and RBS to name just a few.

Work has begun on our latest research which will be out next week. Bellway has performed well since the last piece and is now sitting at its 52 week high.

This email was originally sent on Friday 20 February 2015

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.