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Dangerous recovery plays, the developed world's Roosevelt moment & M&S profits hit

The latest from Investors Chronicle
May 19, 2020

As we (by we, I mean the developed world) edges ever closer towards reopening, Mr Bearbull takes the opportunity to look at whether the re-emergence will be sufficiently confident to justify the resilience of the world’s equity markets these past several weeks, or whether it will stutter and falter as to force equity markets to realign themselves with what the macroeconomic data is saying. 

One sector crying out to reopen is retail. Previously shuttered shops are gradually trading again, and one that will be particularly keen to get going is M&S. The retailer's full-year pre-tax profits fell 20 per cent to £67.2m and it has recorded £212.8m in costs and stock write-downs linked to coronavirus. Read today's full story.

And while Marks's profits hit a three-decade low, Rolls Royce is to make its biggest single reduction in headcount in three decades to the tune of 9,000 jobs. This is, of course, an attempt to survive the collapse in global aircraft demand due to the coronavirus pandemic, but will it work? Nilushi Karunaratne has the latest.

 

"Even in good times recovery plays carry some danger. This chart shows why. It shows the distribution of price changes for the 20 highest-yielding shares (with a market capitalisation of over £500m) in the following quarter in the 10 years between 2010 and 2019."

And it's definitely tempting to go looking for recovery stocks, but Chris Dillow says we should be wary of succumbing to this temptation because while there are big potential gains there are also big dangers. Click here to find out what these dangers are.