Dow Jones hits new record high

The Dow Jones last night notched up its straight ninth record close, hitting 22,118.42 points, up 25 points. Both Goldman Sachs and Boeing helped hoist the Dow higher, though a lack of economic news and light trading volumes assisted. More stock news arrives this week from other players including News Corp and Disney.

Much of the postive sentiment remains with tech and consumer stocks while good jobs numbers on Friday – 209,000 roles created in July – has fuelled stateside economic optimism despite little policy progress from the Trump administration.

However overnight the US dollar saw some weakness in Asian trading with both the yen and Australian dollar making gains. Shortly after 7am the euro was up 0.10% against the US dollar at $1.1804 while the pound was at $1.3042, up 0.07%.

• UK FTSE 100 7,531.94 +0.27%
• Dow 21,118.42 +0.12%
• S&P 500 2,472.16 -0.22%
• Nasdaq 6,340.34 -0.35%
• Nikkei 225 19,990.15 -0.33%
• DAX 12,154.72 -0.22%
• CAC 40 5,130.49 +0.46%
• Gold 1,265.20 +0.04%
• Oil WTI 49.25 -0.26%

Paddy Power Betfair earnings gallop

No shortage of corporate news this morning. With the news of the departure yesterday of Paddy Power Betfair boss Breon Corcoran, the bookie claims half-year revenues are up 9% to £827m while underlying earnings climb 21% to £220m.

Full-year underlying earnings are expected to come in at between £445m and £465m. Corcoran claims there was strong Q1 growth driven by Cheltenham results while Q2 was impacted by the absence of a major football tournament and not-so-positive sports results.

“The integration of our technology platforms is on track for completion by the end of the year and will bring significant benefits including increased quantity and pace of new product development,” said Paddy Power Betfair in an update.

Revenues canter faster for Paddy Power Betfair: Shutterstock

Bellway reports strong growth

Onto a trading update from housebuilder Bellway. Bellway claims revenues are expected to increase 13%-plus to £2.5bn (2016 – £2.2bn). Actual house volume growth rises 10.6% to 9,644 (2016 – 8,721).

Bellway’s operating margin is expected to rise in excess of 22% (last year’s figure) though Bellway has not put a figure on it so far. The housebuilder claims it has significant capacity for further volume growth. Bellway's share price is up almost 50% in the last year at 3,172.47p.

“The forward sales position," the company said earlier, "is strong and the order book at 31 July 2017 rose by 16% to £1,296.3m (2016 – £1,117.1m), with this representing 4,749 homes (2016 – 4,644 homes).”

Bellway revenues appear solid: Shutterstock

Other news: online retailer ASOS is investing more than £30m in a new Atlanta-based fulfilment centre creating 1,600 jobs. InterContinental Hotels claims a 2% climb in half-year revenues to $857m while operating profit surges 8% to $370m. 

Breaking news: New data from KPMG and the British Retail Consortium indicates like-for-like UK high street sales expanded 0.9% in July compared to 1.1% this time last year.