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European Assets sticks to dividend after quality shift
Thursday 13 Aug 2020Small and mid cap European equity investment trust European Assets ( EAT ) has stuck to its generous dividend payout after shifting to quality names which were heavily sold in the market correction earlier this year. In its half yearly results, the trust’s board committed to paying a fourth interim...
Housing market and Rightmove are resilient (for now)
Thursday 13 Aug 2020The resilience of the UK housing market has been one of the notable features as we moved out of lockdown and into the next phase of the pandemic. This was reflected in recent first half results from property site Rightmove ( RMV ) which saw the company reveal that between the beginning of June and...
This ETF owns more gold than the Bank of England
Thursday 13 Aug 2020As investors flock to gold amid a wall of worries, one exchange-traded fund (ETF) has seen so a high level of inflows it now holds more gold than central banks including the Bank of England and Bank of Japan. SDPR Gold Shares , run by American ETF giant State Street, now has $80 billion of...
Big tech smashes forecasts in second quarter
Thursday 06 Aug 2020The US technology-led Nasdaq index was given another huge lift at the end of last week as four of the world’s big five tech companies posted huge profits just days after a marathon five-hour grilling from Congress over their scale and power. Google-owner Alphabet , Amazon , Apple and Facebook ,...
Should BP have cut its dividend more?
Thursday 06 Aug 2020A little more than three months after Royal Dutch Shell (RDSB ) moved to cut its dividend, BP ( BP. ) has followed suit alongside its second quarter results (4 Aug). This was widely expected and the market’s attention appears to have been drawn to further details on the long-term strategy which...
The implications of big commodities rally for the miners
Thursday 06 Aug 2020Commodities have had a wild ride this year, recording their fastest ever recovery from their fastest ever bust. After the coronavirus pandemic various commodities took a major tumble. A World Bank report from April suggested energy commodities, like oil, natural gas and coal, were set to be 40%...
Stalling online growth at Next should prove temporary
Thursday 06 Aug 2020While clothing-to-homewares retailer Next ( NXT ) rallied after the high street bellwether reported (29 Jul) a better than feared second quarter sales fall and upgraded annual profit guidance, online sales, for so long the growth driver for Next, appeared to stall between mid-June and mid-July...
What the banks’ results say about the economy and the outlook
Thursday 06 Aug 2020While recent data like industrial production, consumer confidence and house prices offer hope that the UK economy may be through the worst of the crisis, the first half results from the big banks suggest that the second half of this year is still fraught with difficulty for businesses. So far...
Caution replaces optimism on UK economy
Thursday 30 Jul 2020This week saw the publication of the latest EY Item Club forecast for the UK economy, and it doesn’t make for happy reading. The group uses the Treasury model of the UK economy, but it is free of political or business bias and it certainly isn’t looking at a V-shaped recovery. EY’s chief UK...
Analysts calculate value of Vodafone‘s mobile towers business
Thursday 30 Jul 2020Analysts have run the numbers on Vodafone’s ( VOD ) European mobile masts business and believe that investors should not anticipate significant share price upside from the mobile network being spun-out. Vantage Towers, as the masts business has been named, owns around 68,000 towers around Europe,...