Learning good habits at an early age can pay dividends later in life, as Richard from North Somerset has found out. The investor regularly reinvests dividends from his portfolio to compound his returns.Rather than spend the cash now, he would rather use it to buy more shares so the next round of dividends might be even bigger than the last.Richard is 36 years old and works as a locum for a...

Indigenous Nigerian oil producer Seplat (SEPL) is riding high as it recovers lost crude output after force majeure is lifted on the Forcados export terminal in the country. The company announced on 7 June that as a result it was able to successfully reinstate production from its fields to a level of 56,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day. The shares gained nearly 40% to 107.5p in response.

Just a couple of days after a relief rally on news (2 Mar) it had secured some breathing space on its debts, troubled African oil play Afren (AFR) is back in the dog house falling 20.7% to 7.2p (having earlier traded as low as 5p).The extreme volatility follows the decision not to pay $15 million interest due on its 2016 notes - thereby defaulting on this debt. Perhaps more significantly for...

London stocks get off to a cautious start on Monday with more talks between the European Union and Greece closely watched by investors. The benchmark FTSE 100 index is trading off 7 points in early deals at 6,867, while WTI crude loses 0.7% to $52.39/bbl and Brent crude slips 0.6% to $61.15/bbl.Utility stocks were again lower on the possibility of higher US interest rates, which means reduced...

An overnight rally on Wall Street and gains across Asian markets puts UK investors in positive mood in early trading on Wednesday, pushing London share prices higher. The benchmark FTSE 100 index is trading 40 points up, or roughly 0.6%, at 6,660 thanks to a swathe opf positive corporate announcements, although mid cap progress capped, the FTSE 250 nudging just 24 points higher, 0.15%, to...

Mid cap oil producer Afren (AFR) is in free-fall as an independent audit drastically downgrades the estimated resources contained within a key field. Down 19.6% to 31.6p today, in a little under six months the shares have surrendered nearly 80% of their value and not all of this decline can be attributed to the negative macro backdrop of tumbling oil prices.In July (31 Jul) it was revealed...