Friday Email: 29 April 2016

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 FTSE 100 trade down about 100 points as the week looks to end badly on the back of a poor showing in the US overnight.

The week ahead is very quiet with final results from Avon Rubber and BT Group and interims from Aberdeen Asset Management and Imperial Brands. In terms of ex-dividends, it is not as spectacular as this week with the likes of ITV, but there is a good return to be had from Playtech at over 4%. I am waiting for ITV's Q1 trading statement on the 12th May which should hopefully confirm that 2016 is going to be another good year for the group.

Following their recent fall Apple are starting to look interesting again as the shares touched a 12 month low on Thursday. They increased their dividend by 10% and can keep doing so for some time yet as they also take the route of buying back shares to boost EPS. They increased their buyback by $35 billion to a total of $175 billion. Their total capital retun program increased by $50 billion to $250 billion by March 2018. We dare not mention the Nokia word, but that is what the bears would have you believe now that iPhone sales are on the wane. I do not think that they will fall that far from grace and think that the shares should be on the watch list. Sales in India were a bright spot. Apparently, Carl Icahn sold his entire stake yesterday so further falls may occur. He believes that the Chinese will make things difficult for Apple in the future. They represent a good hedge against Brexit in currency terms at least. A 40% fall from the high of $132 may be a good entry point, but there is some way to go to get there. Watch this space.

The Brexit debate continues to intrigue with polls still coming out at 50:50 and continuing the uncertainty. It is going to be a long wait until 23rd June!

New into DividendMax this week at the request of members we have St Ives and Eurocell.

This email was originally sent on Friday 29 April 2016

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.