Friday Email: 24 July 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 FTSE 100 has fallen a couple of percent this week as profit taking came in following the recent mini rally after the Greek settlement.

The week past saw another big dividend increase from Howden Joinery of 47% and there was a 25% increase from ARM Holdings. All of the rest were single digit increases. Our recent look at Ashtead proved to be bad timing as Bank of America Meryll Lynch downgraded the company. The numbers look even better now and it should be pointed out that even with the downgrade to the 2017 and 2018 numbers, the Meryll analysts still remain above the consensus forecast. The share price took a similar hit this time last year before rallying strongly throughout the rest of the year.

Next week sees one of the busiest of the year as the interim reporting season gets fully underway. There are well over 50 companies that we cover reporting including plenty of model portfolio constituents. The model portfolio still remains well ahead of the market although it took a hit from Aberdeen Asset management yesterday.

The markets remain lacklustre as is common at this time of the year, but technical analysts that we speak to are expecting a strong finish to the year, so the sell in May strategy is looking like it will play out again this year. As always beware October.

Meanwhile, model portfolio constituent Pearson has sold the Financial Times to Japanese firm Nikkei. It seems strange that the FT should move into overseas hands, but that is the nature of the global markets.

This email was originally sent on Friday 24 July 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.