Kingfisher shares are top dog on the UK 100 this morning, over 5% to the good after its latest trading update. This despite headline first half like-for-like sales -1.3%, profits -6% and management reiterating a cautious outlook for the second half. Outlook usually trumps everything else (after all, you can’t buy past growth), in which…

Macro observations After a week in which the Pound clawed back gains against peers on strikingly hawkish rhetoric from the Bank of England, it’s the turn of the central bank’s stateside counterparts to update the market, with many expecting a significant policy announcement. But before the Fed takes the spotlight, the Bank of England Governor…

Next shares are this week’s UK Index star performer (+16%) thanks to another less gloomy outlook from management, allowing guidance to be revised higher for the second time in six weeks. This, coupled with several other observations, has helped the shares over a major hurdle which could trigger a very bullish technical pattern that sees…

Let’s keep this simple. Good news moves prices up and bad news moves prices down. Too many retail investors do not have a trading facility that lets them take advantage of prices moving down – be warned, you will get caught out sooner or later, and it may not be the first time for some…

Next shareholders are 12% better off this morning, helping Marks & Spencer (+4.75%), after another very welcome upward revision to guidance, this time for both sales and profit. Having already been narrowed from ‘-3.5% to +0.5%’ to ‘-3% to +0.5%’ in early August, the revised range for full-year sales growth is now a much more…

Macro observations This week, the calendar has a distinctly British feel as events in the capital have the potential to drive foreign exchange markets. A mixture of both political and macroeconomic factors will play their part in determining whether Sterling can extend its impressive run of form against the US Dollar and recovery against the…