The decision by European central bankers to start quantitative easing was always a question of 'when' and 'how big', rather 'if'.
But while it was no secret that monetary stimulus was on the way, the QE news this week still created a pop for Continental shares - as this FTSE Eurofirst 300 chart shows.
It's certainly a much better result for investors than last week's mayhem caused when Swiss regulators abandoned their currency peg against the euro. John Authers in the FT had some interesting views on the Swiss debacle, as did David Merkel, who wrote about the risks of relying on the kindness of strangers on the Aleph Blog.
Q€ Stocks in focus…
At Stockopedia, we had a look at which of Switzerland's battered stocks might bounce back the quickest with some great insights from Ben Hobson. Many don't realise that we cover European markets in great detail with just under 10,000 stocks analysed - check out the coverage in the European Share Directory and upgrade your subscription if you want to take advantage of stock specific Q€ opportunities.
Pearson came under the spotlight in Fortune Mag this week with the title “Everybody hates Pearson". With a UK StockRank of 76, Pearson is in the top quartile of our ranking system. The press negativity hasn't impacted the Financial Times owner which has just rocketed out of a long chart 'base' to threaten it's previous 2013 highs.
We've written extensively on high yield strategies - and the famous Dividend Dogs approach to income investing. In our regular syndicated article for Interactive Investor, we gave the strategy another once over.
Active vs passive
“I come not to praise forecasters but to bury them." Barry Ritholtz didn't hold back in his deconstruction of market forecasters - and anyone else who professes to know what's coming in the future. Meanwhile, Vanguard's Chris Philip's presented the case for achieving above average investment gains simply by being passive (which is clearly the company line). A more detailed, indeed epic, analysis of active investing was offered up by the excellent Monevator. And talking of epic, company trading updates have been coming thick and fast this week, keeping Stockopedia's small-cap expert Paul Scott chained…
