Week Ahead: FTSE giants | UK housebuilders | US laggards

Good morning and welcome to the Week Ahead, a new content feature from the team at Stockopedia, which we’re going to be testing in the coming weeks.

We’ve heard your feedback requesting more analysis and coverage of larger companies in both the UK and overseas and we hope that this blog will help satisfy those requests as well as providing a weekly destination for your discussion of the biggest stocks on the biggest global markets.

As the title suggests, we’ll be using this blog to highlight announcements due in the coming week (including company financial results, trading statements and relevant economic events) and offering our opinion and analysis to help you make the most informed decisions.

And we’ve got a big week to kick off with, as the FTSE reporting season begins in earnest. BP gets things going on Tuesday with its annual results statement and on Thursday we’ll have numbers from AstraZeneca, Unilever, Compass and British American Tobacco.

It’s also still hectic across the pond (although the tech giants, which tend to capture the most interest from UK investors, have already announced their numbers). Big Pharma will be out in force on Tuesday, with three companies set to announce their annual numbers -...