Betfair Official Blog

The government aren't the only folk who 'spin' the figures

Daily View - 21st February

A bit of excitement yesterday, as in the midst of all the gloom, a rumour circulated that SAB Miller was about to gate crash the S&N/Carlsberg party. This was a beautiful piece of city rumour-mongering, combining both believability and perfect timing. The stock immediately shot up 20p or so, and this morning after the revelation that it was all a hoax, the stock will have to give it all back again, no doubt after the guilty party has offloaded his position and booked a nice little earner. Well done!

Both BAE and Tomkins showed weaker numbers, but better than might have been feared. Much of market movement can be attributed not to what the actual figure is, but what had been 'indicated' to the markets in advance. City fund managers hate surprises, hence half the job of Finance Directors is to subtly inform their investors about market conditions without actually giving out raw data. This is why the Alliance and Leicester figures yesterday were so bad. Analysts had been expecting around £330m but were presented with £256m - a huge difference by any standards. The house broker must be furious as this kind of underperformance can reflect badly on their ability to communicate with the major clients. The stock is likely to remain under pressure for some time and the board will now find few friends in the investment fraternity.

The FTSE is bouncing (yet again) after a late, late show from Wall Street turned a 100 point fall in the Dow into a 100 point rally. The company reporting season has only just begun but there are very few 'good' stories out there and if we believe in tough times for 2008, then we can hardly expect much better this time next year. Support at 5700 and resistance at 6000, a nice wide 300 point range, seems to be containing expectations just for the moment.

On the Pound front the support vs the dollar held once more last night and we have bounced slightly to 1.9462-1.9465. Bears seem to be in the ascendancy at the moment but the continued inability of the market to close below 1.9390 is giving sellers some pause for thought. Against the Euro, we are also probing the lower end of recent trading ranges but, as with the dollar, the supports are still holding out.

Commodities (which I mentioned had gone bananas on Tuesday,) proceeded to top even that yesterday. Gold managed to fall $20 by the US opening only for the Yanks to reverse the whole move, and more, pushing us up $35 to the current (new highs) at $945.0-945.5.