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Big News
Dam disaster triggers spike in iron ore prices
Thursday 07 Feb 2019Iron ore prices have risen by 15% since a dam collapsed at one of Vale’s iron ore mines in Brazil on 25 January. The Brazilian company will halt 40m tonnes of production, equal to 10% of its annual production, in order to decommission dams similar to the one that burst. That has prompted some...
Impressive decade of returns from Computacenter
Thursday 07 Feb 2019C omputacenter ( CCC ) has the best total return track record of any UK-listed technology company from the past decade, according to investment bank Stifel. While the share price has been no slouch over the last decade it is the FTSE 250 company’s consistent dividends, both ordinary and special...
Metro Bank, Indivior, TalkTalk and other news
Thursday 07 Feb 2019Shareholders in Metro Bank ( MTRO ) could be forgiven for thinking they had unwittingly booked tickets on the Oblivion vertical-drop ride at Alton Towers. On 23 January the shares collapsed 39% to £13.45 as the company missed its profit target and chief executive Craig Donaldson confessed it had...
Funds to be forced to improve the quality of information for consumers
Thursday 07 Feb 2019The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), a regulator, has published its second set of rules for asset managers to improve the quality of information they give to consumers and cut out the jargon. The new rules set out how fund managers should describe clearly the objectives and investment policies of...
Ocado, M&S, Fuller’s and other recent news
Thursday 31 Jan 2019Sometimes press speculation can move share prices in the absence of an official announcement from a company or companies. That proved to be the case on 28 January when shares in retailer Marks & Spencer ( MKS ) and online groceries play Ocado ( OCDO ) advanced on reports of a tie-up between the...
Can BP beat expectations again with results on 5 February?
Thursday 31 Jan 2019Oil major BP ( BP. ) has a proud track record to uphold when it reports fourth quarter and full year results on 5 February. Every other set of quarterly figures for 2018 saw the £99bn market cap beat expectations. In the third quarter replacement cost profit, an industry standard measure of income...
Should investors be worried about Tritax’s shift in strategy?
Thursday 31 Jan 2019The £332m acquisition by super-sized warehouse investor Tritax Big Box REIT ( BBOX ) of industrial land developer Db Symmetry represents a shift in the company’s strategy which could alienate some investors. Gigantic warehouses are becoming expensive to buy as a result of heightened competition for...
Safe-haven funds fail to deliver
Thursday 31 Jan 2019So-called safe-haven funds have failed to deliver through the Brexit turmoil, with just one absolute return fund managing to deliver a positive return in each of the past three years. In the three years over the Brexit process (2016 to 2019) just 64 absolute return funds out of 105 have managed to...
Ryanair, Whitbread, Sophos and more news from the past week
Thursday 24 Jan 2019With the New Year well underway there have been plenty of news items to catch investors’ attention of late. There was a reminder of the continuing pressures on the airline sector as Ryanair ( RYA ) and EasyJet ( EZJ ) landed the market with mixed updates on 18 January and 22 January respectively...
Where next for Brexit?
Thursday 24 Jan 2019As we write the market appears to be pricing in an increasing likelihood a no-deal Brexit can be avoided with sterling largely holding on to the gains it has enjoyed in 2019. As a reminder, strength in the currency reflects hopes that the market’s preferred outcome of a softer, or at the very least...