While an indisputable negative for those personally affected by Rolls-Royce’s recently announcement employment cull, the restructuring has certainly gone down well with investors. The company’s share price has risen over 8% today on news that the cuts are expected to lead to £400 million in annual savings by 2020. The cost of implementing the radical restructuring has been estimated at a one-off £500 million.
Anyone investing online in company shares will know that one valuable indicator all may not be well with a company is professional investors taking significant short positions against it. Of course, the professionals are not always right but they do have teams of highly experienced analysts working behind the scenes on the market positions they take. As such, when there is a strong wave of negative sentiment against particular companies by institutional investors it is worth taking note of, particularly if you happen to hold the shares. It can highlight potential dangers you have not spotted yourself such as increasing competition, the danger of technology becoming obsolete, declining returns or a poor balance sheet.
A minority of investors have always taken an alternative route to the standard approach to investing online into an ISA or SIPP. A traditional investment portfolio split between equities and fixed income assets, usually bonds, would be expected to return an average 5% per annum if exposed to a moderate level of risk. However, some investors are ready to both take on more risk with at least a part of their investment capital as well as pursue alternative investment classes such as collectables.
Apple’s share price yesterday rose to $193.98, a new record high, taking the technology company’s overall market capitalisation beyond $950 billion for the first time. Yesterday’s gain moves the iPhone maker to within touching distance of winning the race to become the world’s first ever trillion-dollar company.
Last Friday, June 1st, was a milestone in the ongoing process of opening up China’s vast domestic equity markets to international capital. 233 Shanghai Stock Exchange-listed ‘A shares’ were incorporated into the emerging markets index of New York index giant MSCI. On September 3rd, a further tranche will be integrated. With investors controlling £1.6 trillion in assets following the MSCI indices directly, and as much as £9 trillion in capital linked to the indices, the event is widely accepted as China’s mainstream entry into global capital markets.
Over the first three months of this year London-listed equities were the least popular of any developed market in the world with international institutional investors. The UK’s first quarter GDP growth ground to an almost halt and retail data, considered one of the most accurate reflections of future economic growth, was poor. Throw in a vulnerable looking, warring government and the uncertainty of the Brexit process and it would have been a brave soul who bought the dip that took hold at in mid-January and had knocked over 12% off the FTSE 100 by late March.
Shares in online groceries shopping business Ocado had rocketed to a peak of 997.4 pence by lunchtime today, having closed yesterday at 554.2 pence. The remarkable climb, which equated to over 57% over half a trading day, was sparked by news breaking that a deal had been agreed that will see US supermarket chain Kroger take a 5% stake in the business. The deal will also involve Kroger using Ocado’s robotic warehouse technology across its US business.
While the backdrop of surging oil prices may not be welcomed by airlines, EasyJet’s share price received a further boost today after the company reported a strong set of results yesterday. A rise of 3.2% so far today takes total gains to almost 40% since last September’s lows.
When I finish writing it, this article, along with almost every other file I want to archive will be saved to the Dropbox folder on my laptop. From there it will quickly be automatically synced to the cloud. Last year my previous laptop packed in at one point, corrupted hard disk, and I had to have it repaired.
UK pharma giant Shire’s share price has jumped almost 4.5% today after news its board is backing the takeover bid made by Japanese peer Takeda. After news of the approach originally broke on April 16th and April 19th, Shire’s share price leapt 11%.
