Good morning. The Futures have gone mad overnight, apparently driven by big rises in China, with the Shanghai Index up 3.7% overnight on hopes that the Chinese Govt will "introduce supportive measures". Well that's what they have just said on CNBC anyway!

So we're currently looking at a FTSE 100 opening up 106 points at 6,600. So we've had a lot of volatility lately. The other striking move is that Gold has risen $32 to $1,292, so I've no idea what's going on there - but presumably because of the inverse relationship between the price of Gold, and the market perception of the value of paper currencies. So expectations of more QE is probably what has pushed up the price of Gold.

So I'm looking forward to a good day on the markets here.

There are about 10 announcements that look of interest to me, mostly trading statements, so I'll crack on.

 

 

Although it's a large cap, I must mention that Gulf Keystone Petroleum (LON:GKP) have announced a webcast of their recent investor day. I'm all for this kind of thing. Investor relations is changing, and increasingly companies are communicating better with their private investors, via the web. This is great, as it levels the playing field between Institutions, which traditionally get excellent access to management & information, and private investors, who often find it difficult to get hold of broker notes, don't have time to attend meetings in person because of having day jobs, may not have the confidence to telephone Directors, let alone actually be put through to them.

So I salute any attempts by Listed companies to disseminate better information to the private investor base - e.g. through commissioned research notes (Equity Development, Edison, etc), webcasts of management results presentations, putting presentation slides onto their websites, audio/videos of results presentations & general introductions to the company, communicating with Bloggers & journalists, conference calls & webinars, attending meet the management sessions (e.g. Mello events, ED Investor Forums, investor shows), etc. These are all excellent methods of communicating with private investors.

Building a private investor following using these methods is highly beneficial, as we create the liquidity, set the price, and narrow the spread. Each private investor that is interested in a company will usually trade multiple times during the year - the smart investors…

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