Friday Email: 06 May 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:

It has been a bad week for the markets with the FTSE 100 falling over 200 points and the FTSE 250 over 400 points. There is now a mounting fear about the state of the UK economy and this has manifested itself strongly in the retail sector where sales on the high street fell last month by the most since the financial crisis. Brexit uncertainty looms large over the markets but it still remains 3 to 1 against on Betfair. The market has opened well down again this morning and sub 6000 is looming once again as fear is starting to creep in. The FTSE 100 is now down on the year again. It looks like sell in May has come quickly this year and the market is starting to look good value across the board.

The past week's dividend declarations did not reflect the current misery in the markets as even under pressure Aberdeen Asset Management maintained. Avon Rubber increased by 30%, Sage by 8%, BT by 13%, Imperial by 10% and Electra by 16%. The only drop came from Sainsbury and that was not alarming with a fall in the full year dividend of 8%.

The week ahead seems some big companies reporting including Easyjet, Compass, Experian, TUI and Vedanta. I still remain a big fan of Easyjet which trades on a PE of under 10, with a yield over 4%. It is trading at its lowest for over a year, but this is a company that will surely be hit hard by Brexit and so investors are steering clear for the time being. It is easy to hedge against on betfair and may be worth considering if the drops accelerate after the interim results, which should be solid if not spectacular this year. 

 

This email was originally sent on Friday 06 May 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.