Friday Email: 05 August 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 FTSE 100 drifted down all week until the decision on Thursday by the Bank Of England to cut interest rates to 0.25% and introduce more QE. It is currently trading at the level that it began the week.

August is very often a bad month for the market and it certainly started that way, but Thursday's decision has given the market a boost.

The decision by the Bank of England yesterday further increases the relevance of dividends to savers and investors and there is a real possibilty that we will see a zero interest rate. Interest rates will now not rise for years and as people get used to this environment, it will become increasing difficult for policy makers to increase rates.

The past week saw a lot of companies reporting and whilst in the main the dividend increases were becalmed, there were some very good increases with a 309% increase from Fresnillo, a Euro driven 47% increase from Mondi (30% in Euro terms, 17% currency boost), a dollar driven 59% increase from 4imprint (35% in dollar terms, 24% currency boost) a 43% increase from RSA and a 28.4% increase from Greggs the baker.

The week ahead slows right down as we move into the sleepy August period, although it is a big week for insurers with Legal & General, Standard Life and Prudential all reporting.

A look at the countdown shows a lot of companies going ex dividend next week with the biggest yields coming from Direct Line (boosted by a special dividend), Man Group, Northgate, Greene King and European Assets Trust.

New into DividendMax this week at the request of members we have the Bluefields Solar Income fund and the North American Income fund.

This email was originally sent on Friday 05 August 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.