Good day for FTSE - up 1%, most stocks gain

Britain's top stock index gained 0.97 per cent today on the back of positive corporate news and recovering oil prices with energy stocks delivering the biggest gains. Forecast-beating numbers from Goldman Sachs lead banking stocks to regain some of the recent losses. The FTSE 100 index closed at 5,783.69, up 55.78 points.

Chris Bradshaw
shareprices.com - Tuesday, April 20, 2010

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A number of UK companies released well received news today. Associated British Foods said its clothing retail division, Primark, experienced like-for-like sales growth of 8 per cent over the six months including February 2010 and stated that group pre-tax profit climbed by 20 per cent. Investors sent the stock to the top of the leader board with a gain of 5.89 per cent, closing at 1,015.00p. SABMiller, the brewer, gained 4.5 per cent to close at 1,972.00p as it reported that sales of its lagers are keeping steady despite fears of an output decline.

Crude prices rebounded sending energy stocks up. Cairn Energy was the leader, up 3.17 per cent to 419.50p. Centrica gained 3.02 per cent, Eurasian Natural Resources 2.43 per cent, National Grid 2.24 per cent with BP up 2.01 per cent.

The US investment giant Goldman Sachs posted Q1 profits today of £2.2bn which surpassed strong results from Citigroup and dramatically exceeded Wall Street profit hopes. This tamped down the past few sessions' concern about the repercussions of the fraud charges against the U.S. bank. Royal Bank of Scotland continued upwards by 4.56 per cent to 52.70p, while Lloyds Banking Group, Investec, Standard Chartered and HSBC Holdings gained between 2.75 and 0.1 per cent.

Tesco lost 1.47 per cent despite reporting earnings of £3.4bn, ahead of forecasts. Analysts say the strong showing for Tesco has already been priced into its value of 434.10p.

 

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