Leisure Wrap & Other:

So the trading day is grinding to a close. We’re another day older but are we any wiser? After a day of intensive head-scratching, pen flipping and gossip, we have been considering the following. As always, contact us if you’d like further details:

Brexit:

• Last seen, the odds favoured us staying in.

• And we would be big buyers of that (dependent on price) and, when the date of the referendum is announced, we could have live prices & take a position

• However, for the record, it would appear as though business leaders would prefer that we stay in

• And the young (who admittedly aren’t as good as their older relatives at hauling themselves down to the polling station) also want us to remain a part of Europe

• Hence we could (just could) see economically inactive older people voting for us to leave the EU potentially against the wishes of their (lazy when it comes to voting) peers

• The older generation could (just could) then pop its clogs and leave younger people and the economically active to deal with the consequences

• Democracy, don’t you just love it?

Punch & Enterprise:

• Punch’s shares fell sharply yesterday in an apparent partial-unwinding of its outperformance (at least versus Enterprise) over the last few months

• But today (at time of writing) the shares are up 6%.

• Langton is beginning to suspect that this is the work of a wide-spread between bid and offer prices rather than to any fundamental factors

Inflation:

• ONS reports UK CPI rises to 0.3% in January, highest level since Jan last year and up from 0.2% last month.

• Restaurant & hotels annualised inflation 1.6%, down from 1.7% in year to December. The number is at a 20yr low

• The Bank of England recently said that inflationary expectations were roughly flat

• It has ‘blamed’ its undershooting of the official 2% target mostly on moves in commodity prices

Oil prices:

• Some saying that it could rally to c$50 before the end of the summer

• And, having fallen from $120 to $30 over little more than a year, that’s entirely plausible

• In fact it’s more than that, it’s likely

Random information, hopefully not all of it useless:

• We were going to mention that red wine staves off dementia but, as we are strictly beer-drinkers around here, we forgot

• Equity rally following through (at least at time of writing). Looks set to record third straight up-day. US should have a bit of catching up to do & is forecast to open positively.

• Volatile markets. Bears will suggest sharp rallies are a feature of bear markets but, when they happen, they can be abrupt and painful for short-sellers.

• Goldman Sachs Asset Management says we’re at the bottom & that prices may recover from here – or at least stop going down. And it’s not like they would have an agenda, right?

• It was a ‘risk-on’ type of day yesterday with recently bombed out stocks performing well. Under-performers included ‘near-cash’ stocks such as SAB Miller and Rexam.

• Gold falling over last day or so. Recent chart looks impressive but shorter term moves have been down.

• Gold price flirted with $1,250 then fell. Traders said there was support at $1,232. In reality, not so much. Now trading at around $1,205 having been below $1,190 earlier in the day.

• Sugar price now looking really rather weak. Politically it’s out of fashion but still an important input for a number of other food products.

We’re so 21st Century, this morning’s Tweets (diff. font size denotes importance):

1. Enterprise Inns’ chairman Robert Walker bought 67k shares in the company at 75p on Friday.

2. Punch’s shares fell in late trading yesterday to finish Monday down 8p at 98p. Until recently, they had strongly outperformed Enterprise

3. New ‘study of studies’ at University of Reading, suggests that moderate wine consumption can delay dementia.

4. The number of micropubs in the UK has doubled in the last year to over 200 and is expected to reach 800 by 2018, per Micropub Association

5. Aldi will hire another 5,000 staff in the UK this year alongside 80 new stores, taking the chain’s total to 700 shops and more than 32,000 employees in UK

6. All Leisure Group shares fell by 5.5p to 1.75p yesterday as it reported full year numbers & said that it may de-list from the AIM market

7. The British Hospitality Association has voiced its concern over the lack of transparency from home sharing websites such as Airbnb

8. TUI’s Peter Long & EasyJet boss Carolyn McCall have warned in Sunday Times that leaving the EU would adversely impact the holiday market

9. Merlin announces appointment of Anne-Françoise Nesmes to the Board as CFO with effect from 1 August 2016.

10. World markets: UK & Europe sharply higher yesterday as recovery continued. US closed but Asia mostly up in Tues trade

11. Oil up overnight. Trading at around $34.70 per barrel.

12. B of England policymaker Ian McCafferty says British wage growth now a more distant prospect and added the BoE is ‘out of ammunition’.

13. December Eurozone trade surplus down a little but still an impressive €21bn. Was €22.6bn in prior month