FTSE 100 touches 5,500 to close at 5,494

London stocks had a morning day with risk sensitive banks and mining stocks seeing substantial gains. Some defensive stocks including retail shares saw losses in a day dominated by positive investor sentiment after better than expected US jobs data. FTSE 100 stocks maintained gains through the afternoon, touching a high of 5,505.66 and closing up 1.19 per cent or 64.42 points at 5,494.16.

Chris Bradshaw
shareprices.com - Thursday, September 09, 2010

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Royal Bank of Scotland Group

Even though some concerns still linger about the capital adequacy of European banks financial stocks rose to the top of the list today. Royal Bank of Scotland Group gained 4.69 per cent and Barclays gained 4.61 per cent. Lloyds Banking Group, Standard Chartered and HSBC also gained between 3 per cent and 1 per cent.

Also benefitting from market participant's shift to more risky investments were Vedanta Resources, Xstrata, Lonmin, BHP Billiton, Fresnillo and Tullow Oil all up between 3.35 per cent and 1.85 per cent.

ARM Holdings continued its month's long winning streak by gaining 4 per cent today. The chipmaker today announced a new low power microprocessor for use in smartphones and is still subject to bid talk from Apple and others. This year ARM Holdings has gained 125% in value.

Retail stocks were on the losing side today. Home Retail group was sold by investors as it lowered its profit guidance, losing 2.8 per cent through the day. Kingfisher lost 0.88 per cent while Next and WM Morrison Supermarkets finished today's trading flat.

FTSE 250 participant Renishaw experienced a dramatic 121.50 per cent through today's trading. The precision engineering company said that it is seeing rising demand from Japan and the rest of Asia.

 

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