National Grid PLC (LON:NG.) has been in the news recently after announcing an agreement to sell most of its UK gas distribution business. For some inexplicable reason I was watching CNBC that morning and the presenter said something along the lines of “surely income investors can’t go far wrong with National Grid’s 4.7% dividend yield”.…
2017 looks set to be a challenging year for investors due to the risks posed by a Trump Presidency and higher inflation. New policies pursued by Trump could lead to greater uncertainty. Higher than expected US interest rates may be a consequence of rising inflation resulting from the US running a larger budget deficit. Similarly,…
As discussed in my article for January’s edition of Master Investor Magazine, 2016 was a great year for small cap shares. The AIM All-Share rose by an impressive 14.3%, the FTSE Small Cap Index surged by 11% and dozens of individual stocks grew in value by more than 100%. Three stocks even finished the year…
Try this thought experiment: Your small children are strapped into the child seats in the back of the car and you are driving down a country lane. Now you are approaching a bend in the lane, and a cat darts out into the road. If you swerve to avoid the cat you know that you…
Morrisons (LON: MRW) has enjoyed a superb Christmas trading period. The food retailer posted its best performance for seven years as it recorded LFL sales growth of 2.9% for the nine weeks to 1 January. A key reason for this is the company’s strategy, with its focus on improving the customer experience, becoming more efficient…
Between now and 2020, the Chinese economy is forecast to grow at 2.5x the rate of the UK economy. This means that while China’s economy is 3.85 times bigger than the UK’s economy today, in three years’ time it is expected to be 4.55 times larger. Beyond that, it seems highly likely that China’s economy…
Farming and food production, long-since a Cinderella business, has just become a cool investment space. This month we look at how to make decent returns from feeding the world. How a world of 9.6 billion people in 2050 is going to feed itself in an environmentally sustainable and humane way is one of the greatest…
If you had decided to double up your exposure to the London stock market at the beginning of last year then you would have done well in 2016. The FTSE-100 was up by 14.4 percent on the year, confounding the economic realists (like me) and the Brexit doomsayers (not like me). Though, if you were…
This week has been a cruel one for Next plc (LON:NXT). It has seen its share price fall by around 17% following the release of a profit warning. In my view, the downgrade in profit expectations for the 2017 financial year was hardly surprising. After all, the company had warned that 2016 ‘may be the…
The recovery in mining stocks took many by surprise in 2016. However, despite the renaissance, there is still a heavy weight of opinion against the mining sector. With this in mind, the contrarian in me is optimistic for continued outperformance in 2017. I know my writing here is too intermittent to update readers on investment…
