Good morning, it's Paul here with the SCVR for Friday.
Today's report is now finished.
Terrible publicity last night on the main TV news for Dart (LON:DTG) . Customers holidaying in the Canary Islands reported that DTG's Jet2.com had texted them, cancelling their return flights back to the UK, and telling them an earlier flight home would be an additional £300 each. The reason being that it wasn't economic for the company to send out an empty plane to bring them home. Whoever made that decision is a complete fool, and the damage to the company's reputation is likely to be far more costly than sending out empty planes because something has gone wrong with Govt rules, leaving people stranded. Airlines have a moral obligation to get people home, irrespective of cost.
Talking of airlines, BA's owner, International Consolidated Airlines Sa (LON:IAG) has said that it expects traffic to not fully recover until at least 2023. If they're right, then that surely makes all airline shares look uninvestable?
The on-off-on nature of travel restrictions really puts me off going anywhere near this sector, and that's being reflected in a lot of travel/retail/hospitality shares, some of which are now below the March lows e.g. Greggs (LON:GRG) - but it still looks expensive. Whilst others have reported spectacular rebounds in business, but still look cheap - e.g. Scs (LON:SCS) . So as ever, it's a confusing picture, tricky to navigate. For retailers, I think it's becoming clear that retail parks are recovering much better than town centres. Hence why a focus on companies mainly in retail parks is probably a good idea.
The news is full of stories about fresh covid outbreaks occurring in many countries. Not what we want to hear. It feels like this thing is going to be around for a while.
USA results season - I watched the 9pm onwards CNBC show last night, as several mega-cap tech companies were reporting earnings. Facebook, Apple, and Amazon, all smashed (lowered) forecasts, with big after-hours moves up. This destroyed my theory that the US market is poised to crash because earnings would fall short of forecasts. Therefore I've stopped shorting US indices. It reinforces the point that the US stock market is not the US economy. It's dominated by some of the best companies to have ever existed,…
