UK stocks closed just shy of a five-month high on Tuesday after US president Donald Trump accepted, after weeks of legal challenges, that a formal transition of power should begin for president-elect Joe Biden. Trump's move added to a recent bout of market optimism fueled by positive Covid-19 vaccine news, boosting stocks and oil prices. At midday the benchmark FTSE 100 index was up 75 ...

UK stocks traded steadily higher from the opening on Tuesday after US president Donald Trump accepted, after weeks of legal challenges, that a formal transition of power should begin for president-elect Joe Biden. Trump's move added to a recent bout of market optimism fueled by positive Covid-19 vaccine news, boosting stocks and oil prices. At midday the benchmark FTSE 100 index was up 75 ...

UK stocks opened higher on Tuesday as focus shifted to the reopening of the economy. Oil stocks were boosted by rising commodity prices. In early trading the FTSE 100 index was 0.4% ahead at 6,375. BP (BP.) gained 4% to 264.4p and Royal Dutch Shell (RDSB) was 3% higher at £12.90, following a 0.7% increase in Brent Crude prices to $46.4 a barrel. The gold price slipped back 0.6% to $1,827 ...

The FTSE 100 continued its decline throughout Thursday morning, falling below the 6,000 mark as investor hopes of a V-shaped economic recovery were dampened by the Bank of England. The central bank said the British economy would not recover its end-2019 size until the end of next year, later than its earlier estimate of a recovery by the second half of 2021. In its policy decision, the ...

UK stock markets fell sharply in opening trading on Thursday after the Bank of England forecast a slower-than-expected rebound from the Covid-19 pandemic, while Glencore’s (GLEN) dividend cut and several heavy hitters going ex-dividend dragged on markets. The benchmark FTSE 100 dropped nearly 1.5% in early trading to 6,018.33 as investors retreated from equities, following a weak end to the ...

There remains ‘significant concentration risk’ across the Investment Association (IA) UK Equity Income Sector, says a leading fund manager. The latest analysis from Octopus Investments warns that the wave of dividend cuts in recent months demonstrates the need for ‘genuine diversification’ if investors are to avoid further instability to their income. The number of UK equity income ...

UK stocks rallied on Wednesday after two days of losses with domestically focused banks and insurers the main drivers amid thin corporate news. Leading the gains were Lloyds Bank (LLOY) and Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) up 3% apiece to 36.3p and 135p respectively, supported by insurers RSA (RSA) and Phoenix (PHNX) up 2% to 423p and 675p respectively. At 9am the FTSE 100 index was up 0.4% to ...

Investors seeking exposure to a wide range of UK companies still paying dividends should snap up BMO Capital & Income Investment Trust (BCI) as its portfolio contains many of these prized names. This trust could be an easier and more convenient way for income investors to back the dividend payers as it only requires buying a single product rather than lots of individual shares. Among the ...

Since the middle of March almost half of the companies in the FTSE 100 have suspended or cut altogether their final 2019 and full year 2020 dividends. So far just 26 companies in the FTSE have not changed their plans to pay dividends. The names are published in this article alongside all the relevant stocks outside of the FTSE 100. We have included the prospective yields based on the latest ...

More than a fifth (22) of FTSE 100 companies have either changed their chief executive this year or announced plans to do so next year. So what’s causing this turmoil at the top? ‘The FTSE 100 has not really gone anywhere for two years excluding dividends so individual CEOs have been under more pressure from investors,’ says Patrick Thomas, an investment director at Canaccord Genuity ...

London’s FTSE firmed 59.1 points to 7,197 as the week drew to a close, with consumer-facing stocks back in fashion. JD Sports Fashion (JD.), Whitbread (WTB), Kingfisher (KGF) and Next (NXT) all featured in the blue chip index’s top 10 risers. Despite ongoing political uncertainty, early indications suggest that Black Friday was good for retailers, implying that consumers might have become ...

There is a reason why some investors think the best things come in small packages. Smaller companies, just by virtue of their size, have more significant growth potential and could increase their revenue at a rapid rate if things are going well. With higher reward comes higher risk however, and without the right knowledge trying to invest in small caps can expose you to significant ...

UK share dealing gets off to a slow start on a typically quiet Friday morning session with investor attention elsewhere. At the start of share trading the benchmark FTSE 100 is down roughly 25 points at 7,382.04, led by miners Evraz (EVR) and Anglo American (AAL), both off by around 3% at 373.7p and £20.495 respectively. British American Tobacco (BATS) tops the FTSE 100 leader board on ...

The latest quarterly shuffling of the deck in the FTSE 100 list of blue-chip companies and the FTSE 250 index of mid-cap stocks sees a significant amount of change. To qualify for inclusion in the FTSE 100 index a stock needs to meet certain liquidity requirements and have a sufficiently large market capitalisation to rank in the top 100 companies. Stocks which fail to meet these criteria ...

Approximately one quarter of the FTSE 100 is yielding 6% or more, according to analyst forecasts collated by SharePad. This seems unusually high and begs the question: are UK stocks simply very cheap or are investors pricing in very bad news for many of the biggest companies?  In last week’s Editor’s View column we asked why income investors had fallen out of love with a large number of ...

The UK software sector’s FTSE 100 membership is about to jump by 50% presuming indicative changes are confirmed at the end of today’s stock market trading. Computer-aided design software supplier AVEVA (AVV) is one of two new entrants to the UK’s blue-chip index (insurer Phoenix Group (PHNX) is the other). The pair will replace gaming firm GVC (GVC) and Wood Group (WG.), the oil services ...

In a companion piece to last week’s FTSE 100 special, this week Shares investigates the FTSE 250 index, the authoritative measure of UK-quoted mid cap companies. It could be described as Anteros to the FTSE 100’s Eros; the FTSE 250 is more obscure than its larger and more celebrated sibling index yet it has attracted investment right from its October 1992 launch. Perceived as the better ...

As a nation, we stopped living longer in 2010. The upward trend in life expectancy ended and now a host of pension providers are reaping the benefits. Insurance companies sell annuities, which are guaranteed incomes for life to people at retirement based on assumptions about longer lives. These companies have to hold cash in reserve to cover these guarantees. If someone dies before they are ...

The FTSE 100 starts the week on the front foot, up 37.5 points to 7,701. This follows positive trading in Asia. Mining giant Glencore (GLEN) also aided the index with a 1.7% rise. The prospect of a no deal exit from the EU looming has plunged the pound to an 11 month low against the dollar, aiding those FTSE 100 companies earning their revenue overseas. Asset manager Standard Life Aberdeen ...

Phoenix (PHNX) is the UK’s largestconsolidator of closed life assurancefunds or insurance policies that are no longer open to new business. It may seem a pure income play, offering a prospective dividend yield of 6.8% for 2018. That makes it the 35th largest dividend yield in the UK after Phoenix’s £3.2bn acquisition of Standard Life Aberdeen’s (SLA) Assurance business in ...