Good morning! A very quiet day today for news. The FTSE 100 futures are indicating a positive open, up 32 points to 6,551. As has been well publicised, this has been the first week where AIM shares have been allowed in ISAs. So far this week the FTSE Aim 100 (FTSE:AIM1) is up 0.84% (from 3,350 on 2 Aug to 3,378 on 8 Aug), when over the comparable period the FTSE 100 Index (FTSE:UKX) has been down 1.77% (from 6,648 to 6,530), so that's a relative out-performance of 2.6% in the last week for the largest AIM stocks.
Interestingly though, FTSE Small Cap Index XIT (FTSE:SMXX) was also up almost as much, up 0.68% (a relative out-performance of 2.45%), which suggests that this has been a general small caps move up, not just for AIM shares. Subjectively, things have seemed much more positive than that to me, in the last few weeks, but especially this week. Quite a few of my small cap holdings have been on fire lately, zooming up considerably. In fact, if you look at my Blog page where I jot down ideas for further research, there have been some remarkable performers in there, and very few mistakes (Silverdell being the only serious one). I know it's a bull market though, and everyone looks terribly clever when a rising tide is lifting all boats, so things do need to be seen in that context.
I've top-sliced a couple of my holdings, but am running with the rest, as I see good upside in things now that the market is pricing in a sustainable economic recovery.
As regards company results, the first one I've had a quick look at is bus maker Optare (LON:OPE). The figures look dreadful, with a £5.5m loss on £76m turnover for the year ended 31 Mar 2013.
It fails my Balance Sheet review, because net assets are negative by £4.7m, and stripping out intangibles, net tangible assets gets even worse, at negative £12.1m. The whole thing is propped up by bank debt of £18.7m, and that is itself supported by a guarantee from the largest shareholder, an Indian company called Ashok Leyland,…
