Friday Email: 30 October 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 is trading flat to slightly down on the week at just above the 6400 level at market open. The market suddenly does not feel so bullish and there has been a fresh bout of heavy selling of commodities stocks, just when they seemed to be turning up. US GDP rose less than expected yesterday, but the Fed was still hinting at a December rate rise, resulting in a falling maket that did manage to recover a lot of the lost gound by the close of play yesterday. So, overall, the market has done well to hold onto recent gains, although it has felt a bit more volatile this week.

The past week has been very quiet on the corporate front with the only dividend increase of note being the 13.1% rise by BT Group, who have now managed 5 consecutive Annual double digit dividend increases.

The week ahead sees ABF report its finals on Tuesday, M&S and Vedanta report their interims on Wednesday and Shanks Group, Diary Crest, Tate & Lyle and Cable & Wireless report on Thursday.

New into DividendMax this week as part of the full coverage exercise is Utilitywise, Seplat Petroleum, Prime People, Plexus Holdings, Matchtech Group and Inland Homes. I had a look at Plexus Holdings after their large dividend increase (albeit from a low base) and they look pretty interesting. They look like they have some good technology and they have actually paid a growing dividend since 2009 unlike many AIM companies. Ben van Bilderbeek, the CEO received the accolade of Entrepreneur of the Year 2013 at Grant Thornton’s Quoted Company Awards. In the same year the company won the best Oil and Gas Plc at the Annual Stock Market Wire Awards. For an oil related stock, they have performed pretty well in terms of growing revenues, profits and the dividend.

This email was originally sent on Friday 30 October 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.