Inflation fears hold market

With warnings that the swine flu pandemic could return with a vengeance in the autumn, positive news from GlaxoSmithKline on the first trial of their vaccine caused shares to rise.

Chris Bradshaw
shareprices.com - Tuesday, September 15, 2009

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GlaxoSmithKline

They have already received orders, along with Baxter, to produce enough vaccine to immunise everyone in the country twice.

Tough times continue for temporary replacement vehicle company Helphire. It announced major one off restructuring costs of £82m to cover the binning of IT systems, write downs on acquisitions, redundancies and legal charges. The company also confirmed that it had lost the prestigious AA and Saga contracts that generated 11% of sales. Shares dropped a massive 15% in July to 37.5p but rose slightly on expectations that the management were getting to grips with the problems.

The FTSE 100 has risen 45% since hitting its low point in March but is 7.3% lower than just before Lehman Brothers went into administration last year sending the world markets into collapse. With inflation at 1.6% (it's lowest since January 2005) but exceeding analysts expectations of 1.4%. The pound rose nearly 0.5 cents on the news as sterling continued to strengthen.

ITV shares fell after the Competition Commission rejected proposals that would change how much broadcasters can charge advertisers. The Commission hasn't ruled out a future change but stated that ITV1 still had a dominant share of the viewing public.

Broker sentiment turned full circle with Goldman Sachs upgrading Johnson Matthey to "neutral" from "sell". This follows a downgrade on Monday by Morgan Stanley and shares gained far more than they lost to trade at 1487p, up 39p on Friday's close. Goldman Sachs says that it likes companies with exposure to fast growing economies such as India, China and Russia.

 

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