Just over five years ago the stock market began to react in earnest to news of the Covid pandemic.The sell-off was short and sharp, with a modest recovery from the lows in the spring followed by sharper gains in November 2020 after AstraZeneca (AZN) made a vaccine breakthrough.However, a large number of UK stocks are still trading below the levels they were at by the close of trading on 21...

While there is much handwringing over the outlook for the new-build housing sector, it seems the rest of the UK construction industry is in rude health. That has helped construction to be one of the best performing sectors in the FTSE 350 index year-to-date, up 20%.The latest S&P Global/CIPS UK Construction PMI survey - which tracks changes in the total volume of construction activity in the...

Once a favourite among UK fund managers, Genuit (GEN) has fallen out of favour this year with a near-60% share price loss. The FTSE 250 company, formerly called Polypipe, is one of Europe's biggest plastic piping manufacturers and is also involved in underfloor heating and ventilation.The £630 million company has been investing in factory automation, it has scale, and it is a key player in...

The UK's FTSE 100 fell on Tuesday, dragged down by heavyweight retail, insurance and energy stocks, although employment numbers highlighting a steady UK economic recovery helped limit losses.The UK blue-chip index was affected by worries over the economic slowdown of China, the world's growth engine, which continued to dog international stock markets on Tuesday.The FTSE 100 drifted 0.15% lower...

Independent hospital group Spire Healthcare (SPI) reversed 2018's first half losses, posting a £9.6m pre-tax profit for the six months to 30 June 2019.But investors have focused on lacklustre top line growth, leaving the share price modestly lower (less than 1%) at 124.7p. Revenues increased just 3.4% to £491.6m.Private medical insurance, representing 50% of the business saw the strongest...