Friday Email: 21 October 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 is trading above 7000 and the market continues to bounce back in the face of any sell offs.

The past week saw some good declarations with Bellway leading the way with a 40% increase in its full year dividend. Next week sees Barratt go ex dividend with a 5% plus yield on its ordinary and special dividends combined. Old favourite Photo-me produced a very good AGM statement yesterday as it benefits from 75% of its business being outside of the UK. More importantly the Laundry business is powering along with a near 200% increase in sales over the same period last year. Connect increased its dividend slightly and now yields over 6%. Softcat declared a special, which taken with its ordinary dividend yields over 5%. After an initially muted reaction, the shares have risen 10%. Other hefty single dividend payments going ex in the coming week include Games Workshop and Seplat Petroleum.

The week ahead is very quiet from a reporting perspective. It looks as though Hilary Clinton will become the first woman US president as Donald Trump continues to bemuse. The reaction that I hear from a lot of people is one of confusion that a country with the population and economic power of the U.S can only come up with the two presidential candidates that they have. Rather like the Brexit vote, i now just want it out of the way.

This email was originally sent on Friday 21 October 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.

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