SSE (LON: SSE), BT (LON: BT.A) and Enterprise Inns (LON: ETI) soar to new records.
The FTSE 100 (UKX) achieved yet another 52-week high today, gaining 36 points to hit 6,084. The excitement over the US fiscal cliff deal has clearly not been dampened by fears that the US Federal Reserve's QE programme is nearing its end.
As the FTSE is reaching for the sky, so are a good few constituents of the various indices. Here are three, including a couple of FTSE 100 giants, that are at or near record highs:
SSE
SSE (LSE: SSE) has today beaten its previous 52-week closing high of 1461p, albeit an intra-day high of 1,465p -- at the moment it has fallen back a bit, to 1,456p. But the energy supplier still doesn't look excessively expensive, with current forecasts for the year to March putting the shares on a price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio of 13, with a very nice 5.9% dividend yield expected.
The share price itself is up almost 50% since the recession bottom, and there aren't many investments that can provide such levels of combined growth and income.
BT
Shares in BT Group (LSE: BT-A) (NYSE: BT.US) are scraping up against a previous closing high of 242p, standing just a penny short at 241p at the time of writing. The price has done very well to rise nearly 25% over the past year. After the telecoms giant saw its shares slide prior to the recession, due to things like problems with its pension fund deficit, the price has gone on to recover well and has more than trebled since March 2009.
Forecasts suggest a dividend yield of 4%, which might not be as good as SSE's, but the superior share price growth has made it a very nice investment over the past few years.
Enterprise Inns
The Enterprise Inns (LSE: ETI) share price recovery has been pretty impressive this year, with the 52-week high of 106p meaning it has four-bagged over the past 12 months. Of course, today's price is a long way from pre-recession levels, but that really won't matter to anyone who bought in a year ago.
Forecasts for September 2013 put the shares on a P/E ratio of only 5.2, but there is a lot of debt on the books.
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> Alan does not own any shares mentioned in this article.
