Artful Investing

Tomorrow's announcements to the stock exchange will include Ben Bailey's full year results. I've got over 25% of my money in Ben Bailey, so my fingers are crossed for good news, with profits in advance of 80p per share, i.e. if the profit was distributed among shareholders, they would get 80p for every share held. The size of my shareholding has been declared in a previous blog.

So, I'll be rising at 06:30 a.m. to have breakfast and wait for the news article to be posted to the UK wire announcement service

http://www.uk-wire.co.uk/

at 7 a.m (such announcements are traditionally embargoed until then). This gives any interested parties an hour to digest the news before the London Stock Exchange opens at 8 a.m.

Since my last blog there has been more positive news from Chaucer Holdings, my second largest position. Chaucer announced their syndicate results and forecasts for 2003. Not to be confused with their annual results, which will of course be influenced by syndicate results. This was accompanied with an encouraging trading statement from the chairman

'I am delighted with the progress that the Group continues to make. Trading
conditions remain encouraging in our major markets and we continue to benefit
from favourable loss experience.'

and also

each division has started the 2004 year of account
positively, with gross premiums written, net of brokerage, being ahead of the
same stage for 2003.

You can read the rest here at UK wire. I keenly await Chaucer's interim results announcement, due April 4th.

The Artful Dodger