Early gains for FTSE as banks rebound and oil price improves

The UK’s top index looks set to recover some of the losses made in yesterday’s trading due to a strong opening rebound by the banking sector and investors eyeing up a number of market bargains.

Rob Hull
shareprices.com - Thursday, May 20, 2010

Printable version email to a friend Subscribe to shareprices.com newsfeed
Barclays was the biggest early gainer this morning

The FTSE 100 suffered a brutal 2.81 per cent drop yesterday, caused mostly by the news that Germany was putting a hold on all naked short-selling until March next year and the Euro plummeted to a fresh four year low.

Risk sensitive banks were hit hard with drops in the region of 1.5 and four per cent yesterday for RBS (LON:RBS), Lloyds Banking Group (LON:LLOY), Barclays (LON:BARC) and HSBC (LON:HSBA).

However, today Barclays was the big gainer on the FTSE before 09:30BST with a share price increase of over 10p, over three per cent up.

Lloyds was also up by over 2.5 per cent and both RBS and HSBC began the morning with around 1.5 per cent gains.

British stocks in whole were helped by the news yesterday that the US Federal Reserve had revised its forecast for the US economy due to strong growth data obtained from the first three months of the year.

However, investors are still remaining tentative and are closely analysing reports coming out of overseas markets.

Energy groups were also dealt heavy blows yesterday, not helped by a fall in oil prices below $69 a barrel.

But prices rose above the $70 mark this morning, helping push share prices for energy giants BP (LON:BP) up over 2.5 per cent.

Fellow oil specialists, Cairn Energy (LON:CNE) and Petrofac (LON:PFC) also gained well over two per cent in early trading.

The National Grid (LON:NG) was the biggest faller in early trading as it plunged to losses of over six per cent.

The drastic drop has come due to news of a £3.2bn cash call - the gas and electricity network operator is tapping shareholders to fund its future investment programme.

At 09:30BST the FTSE 100 was up 46 points, just short of one per cent at 5,205.85.

 

Latest News

Related News

FTSE 100 Latest

ValueChange
5,875.9314.33  % fall