Royal Mail shares are bottom of the postie’s bag this morning, investors uninspired by H1 results. A 5% fall in underlying operating profits on revenues +1% may have beaten consensus, and a 5.7% dividend hike and 20% increase in cost cutting plans may well be good news.However, there were no London property disposals (Brexit?) and letter…
Barratt Developments (BDEV) is the UK blue-chip laggard this morning after negative messages within a Q1 trading statement offset a solid order book and reiteration of FY guidance. Weakness in the higher priced and higher margin key London market requiring ‘price action’ (management means discounts and disposals) is a concern for investors, especially after such…
Tuesday’s latest release of Kantar Worldpanel market share data for UK supermarkets showed Britain’s biggest supermarket, Tesco, increased sales by their fastest rate in over three years. Growing their share of the market by 2.2%, up from October’s figure of 1.3% (itself the first time that the supermarket has managed positive sales growth since 2015), the data is…
Shares in UK Index telco heavyweight Vodafone (VOD) have found an excuse to bounce from another close shave with 200p, this thanks to slightly better than expected Q3 results this morning. Pragmatism has prevailed with investors concentrating on progress in pre-tax profits, operating cash flow and net debt, rather than negatives including weakness in handsets,…
Macro observations Once again a surprise political event has altered the landscape of global FX markets; however, far from reacting in a similar vein to the “Brexit playbook”, the US presidential election instead prompted the complete opposite. A surprise Donald Trump victory was forecast to produce a sell-off in the US Dollar similar to the…
What a week it’s been. Trump triumphed. So far, the Trump rally has been straight from the ‘Brexit playbook’, with the initial market shock as the polls came in being quickly replaced with a rally of greater proportions. The Dow Jones has posted fresh all-time highs; the German DAX touched 10800 for only the third time this…