Stock market investors take a step back
Amid signs that all may not be rosy in the garden a number of investors are now sitting on the sidelines as the UK stock market takes a "breather". After a period of relatively upbeat statements and comments, the last few days have been dominated by worse than expected profits and downbeat forecast for the immediate future. Ashtead, the construction equipment hire group, was the latest UK listed company to issue a profits warning for 2009/10 with concerns that the economy will still struggle for some time to come.
Now that the controversy and discussions regarding the UK budget have died down it would appear that despite a number of upbeat reports on the UK property sector, the UK economy as a whole is not yet in recovery mode. It will be interesting to see how the UK banking reporting season finishes as today's figures from HSBC have disappointed many investors, even though they were not as bad as some had expected. Even though there have been signs of increased consumer confidence over the last few days there are fears that this confidence bounce could be short lived and turn back down in the short to medium term.
Despite many analysts issuing more upbeat statements over the last few weeks it would appear that some have underestimated the depth and problems related to the UK recession and have possibly called the bottom a little early.
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