FTSE hits eighth consecutive day of growth on BP and miner gains

The FTSE 100 has ploughed to its eighth day of gains in the early hours of today’s session, headed by BP’s (LON:BP) share price rebuild despite CEO Tony Hayward’s six-hour grilling by US Congress yesterday. Mining stock has recovered from a dip in share price growth yesterday and an upgrade from JPMorgan has edged Aviva (LON:AV) to the heights of the index gainers.

Rob Hull
shareprices.com - Friday, June 18, 2010

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Aviva has been upgraded by JPMorgan

Hayward, who has come under continuous scrutiny from the US Government and President Barack Obama, will find his face plastered all over newspapers in the US this morning after politicians, press and the American public reacted angrily to the CEO’s answers during the cross-examination about the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and who was to blame.

But despite this, the share price for the oil giants is up by more than three per cent. At 10:00BST the shares have gained over 13p and 3.8 per cent.

BP said on Wednesday a secondary containment operation to retrieve leaking oil from the damaged Deepwater Horizon rig has been activated which helped usher investors towards the hammered stock.

And with the company reportedly set to sell off assets to fulfil its $20bn commitment to funding the full compensation costs of the spill after cutting shareholder’s dividend for the first three quarters of the year to add to the clean-up pot, investors have been affirmed by the concrete plans to cope with the financial onslaught of the spill.

The stock was also aided by upgrades to ‘buy’ from ‘hold’ from Societe Generate.

Sentiment in other oil and gas producers also gained with BG Group (LON:BG) and Royal Dutch Shell (LON:RDSA) also up between 0.3 and 0.8 per cent.

Mining stock also rebounded after a losing session yesterday. At the peak of the gains were gold-orientated groups Randgold Resources (LON:RRS) and Fresnillo (LON:FRES) as the metal price continued to hold nearing an all-time high.

Fresnillo shares are currently 31p or three per cent up, and Randgold stock is 100p up with a gain of 1.6 per cent.

Lonmin (LON:LMI), Xstrata (LON:XTA) and Rio Tinto (LON:RIO) have also been in demand with gains between 1.3 and 2.3 per cent for the three major mining groups.

Banks are also continuing positive progression from yesterday’s session with RBS (LON:RBS) heading the sector after Spanish bank Santander said it was interested in around 300 British branches of the part-nationalised bank. The share price has gained almost one per cent.

Insurance giant Aviva is one of the exceptional stocks in this morning’s session after JPMorgan upgraded its rating to overweight and reset its price target to 509p from 285p. At 10:00BST the stock is two per cent up.

The FTSE 100 index is currently 0.4 per cent up with a gain of 50 points to 5275.70.

 

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