FTSE 100 Steady During Light Trading

Trading on the London Stock Exchange was light on Friday, with little in the way of corporate news, and markets in the U.S. closed for the 4th July holiday.

Dominic Turner
shareprices.com - Friday, July 03, 2009

Printable version email to a friend Subscribe to shareprices.com newsfeed

This was in contrast to Thursday, when poor U.S. unemployment figures and a $2 a barrel fall in the price of crude oil, to below $67 a barrel, encouraged selling, and shaved more than 2% off the FTSE 100 index. Share prices recovered slightly on Friday, such that, by midday, the blue chip index was up 8 points at 4,242.

Publisher Reed Elsevier led the way as media stocks received a boost from Credit Suisse, which upgraded the sector to overweight, saying that it had underperformed the market by 24% since its peak in March. Conversely, resource stocks took most points off in the index, reflecting the fall in commodity prices. Cairn Energy and Petrofac were the worst performers amongst oil related stocks, while, in the mining sector, Kazakhyms, Rio Tinto and Vedanta Resources were also major fallers. The largest mining company in the world, BHP Billiton, was also down 0.7%, on the news that it is to sell on Yabulu nickel refinery in Queensland, Australia, writing down an estimated $500 million, plus a further estimated $175 million in unrecoverable tax benefits.

Elsewhere, financial services group Friends Provident was the worst performer amongst FTSE 100 constituent companies, down 6.89%, at 63.40p, as the market adjusted to the de-merger of its 52% stake in F & C Asset Management.

 

Latest News

Related News

FTSE 100 Latest

ValueChange
5,901.07105.00  % rise