MARKET CAP: £1BN & ABOVE OCADO +101%Shares in Ocado (OCDO) have doubled in value in 2018 as the company made progress with signing international contracts where it sets up large distribution centres to enable online grocery services.Building on a 2017 tie-up with France's Groupe Casino, Ocado has this year signed deals with Canada's Sobeys, Sweden's ICA and most significant of all, with US grocer

UK investors will likely spend most of Thursday morning mulling the possibilities of three central bank announcements later today. The Bank of England's news at midday has damp squib written all over it while the ECB's likely downgrade to growth estimates has already been leaked.We'll find out the facts at 12.45pm, but it is Turkey that could grab the economic headlines, also at midday, with its'

On a pretty quiet day for corporate news the FTSE 100 is down a little to 7,414,14.Mobile telecoms giant Vodafone (VOD) ticks up 0.4% to 212p as it inks a $23bn deal to merge its Indian unit with rival Idea Cellular. The transaction would create one of the world's largest mobile companies with more than 400 million users.Facilities manager Carillion (CLLN) is flat at 223.6p despite winning a £90m

The frenzy of initial public offerings (IPOs) continues to benefit intellectual property investors as they find appetite from the financial community to spin off early-stage businesses onto the stockmarket. The latest investment to come from the IP Group (IPO) estate is Xeros, which we flagged in yesterday's Shares as a potential IPO candidate. The near-waterless washing machine expert plans to li

Although the tin price is not pushing higher as promptly as many analysts expect, it is still possible to make a bull case for the commodity owing to supply problems. It is hard to get exposure via UK mining equities apart from Bushveld Minerals (BMN:AIM) where a lack of adequate information limits the scope to be enthusiastic about the stock (see The Big Debate, Shares 6 Feb). Instead overseas ma

Could China switch from net exporter to net importer of vanadium? If rumours prove correct that the Asian superpower's vanadium supplies are dwindling as one of its big mines nears depletion then the answer is yes. Helping the demand cause is the need for China to use more of the metal to strengthen its steel in order to meet international standards.Vanadium can be used in batteries to store exces

Too many mining investors are risking their money as they obsess about quick share price gains and fail to properly research companies. Investors must focus on the fundamentals of exploration data and the viability of economic extraction and processing. Failure to do so could see wealth destruction, not creation, as over-hyped stocks will eventually be exposed if their assets cannot live up to exp

In July 2012, the fact that the mining sector had, on average, halved in value over the preceding 12 months may have prompted many investors to go value hunting. This sharp sell-off, in the context of massive gains made between 2003 and 2008 and then again during 2009 to 2011, seemed out of the ordinary. Yet in hindsight, buying at this point would have been the worst move. A year later, the secto

Two months ago (see Shares, Commodities 2 May), we highlighted project economics and cashflow as the hot topics on investors' minds when they research the natural resources sector. While these themes remain priorities today, portfolio builders are still interested in the junior end of the market and how value can be created either through opportunistic acquisitions or traditional exploration.Three