FTSE100 sideways after early morning gains, Wolseley outperforms

Pressure on banks and commodity stocks put too much weight on the FTSE 100 index which finished slightly lower despite a good performance from Wolseley, BP and the Rolls Royce Group. After peaking at 5,624 in early morning trading the FTSE 100 dipped and bopped to close at 5,569.27, down 9.17 points or 0.16 per cent.

Chris Bradshaw
shareprices.com - Wednesday, September 29, 2010

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Today's top performer is Wolseley the construction and building materials company which drew investor attention as US mortgage data came in better than expected, boosting the stock by 6.53 per cent. BP also posted solid gains after a $3.5 billion corporate bond sale was solidly oversubscribed. BP shares are continuing down the road of recovery with prices closing at 412.00p today, up 3.91 per cent.

Unfortunately banks are still plagued by uncertainty as the outlook for Irish sovereign debt is looking gloomier while indications of a worldwide economic recovery are still showing weakness. HSBC Holdings moved down by 1.59 per cent, Lloyds Banking Group moved down by 1.26 per cent and Standard Chartered lost 0.82 per cent.

A number of commodity stocks also moved down. Vedanta Resources lost 4.25 per cent as news broke that one of its copper smelters has been ordered to close by the Indian government. This comes as the price of copper is reaching across $8,000.

AstraZeneca is also at the bottom of the list as investors sold shares when the Royal Bank of Scotland announced that it is cutting the rating of the pharma giant from "buy" to "hold". AstraZeneca moved down by 1.89 per cent.

 

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