16th Feb 2023 18:45
(Alliance News) - It was a record-breaking day in London as the FTSE 100 index reached a new intra-day high and set a new closing peak, ending above 8,000 for the first time in its history.
London's lead index finished on Thursday at 8,012.53, up 0.2%, having earlier hit an intra-day high of 8,047.06, taking gains for the year to date to 458 points, or 6.1%.
Index operator FTSE Russell has taken a look at the FTSE's path to 8,000 tracking its highs, lows, road through key landmarks, overall returns and how the constituents of the index have changed along the way.
It has taken 40 years for London's premier equity index to move from 1,000 to 8,000, having reached four figures on December 30, 1983. Between 1996 and 1998 equities soared, and the FTSE gained 2,000 points in only 18 months.
It took out the 4,000 mark on October 2, 1996 and moved past 5,000 ten months later, before hitting 6,000 on April Fools Day in 1998. Times since then have been no joke, however.
Progress since 1998 has been somewhat lethargic. It took a further seven years to reach 7,000, on March 20, 2015, and nearly another eight to achieve today's landmark of a close above 8,000 points.
Since 2015, the UK voted to leave the European Union in 2016, before officially withdrawing from the bloc at the end of January 2020. Also in 2020, the Covid-19 pandemic hit equities. More recently, inflation, and central bank efforts to curb it, have also hurt equity valuations.
An investment in the FTSE 100 at launch would have provided a total return of more than eight-fold, with the largest daily total return of 9.8% occurring on November 24, 2008, as the world was gripped by the financial crisis in the wake of the collapse of Lehman Brothers.
The smallest daily return of negative 12% came on October 20, 1987, around the time of Black Monday, which saw equities tumble around the world.
The make-up of the index has certainly changed, but there are some constants. One is British American Tobacco PLC. The tobacco firm has generated the largest total return of any original constituent company to now, roughly 70-fold.
Including BAT, just 23 of the original FTSE 100 companies still remain, many of the top names in British business. Some under new identities, but constants in the index nevertheless.
They are British American Tobacco, Unilever PLC, Whitbread PLC, Reckitt Benckiser Group PLC, Relx PLC, Associated British Foods PLC, Legal & General Group PLC, Rio Tinto PLC, GSK PLC, Prudential PLC, Shell PLC, Smith & Nephew PLC, J Sainsbury PLC, BP PLC, Pearson PLC, BAE Systems PLC, Johnson Matthey PLC, Standard Chartered PLC, Tesco PLC, Barratt Developments PLC, Barclays PLC, Aviva PLC and Land Securities Group PLC.
The question is will it be another eight years before the FTSE 100 hits 9,000 points?
By Jeremy Cutler, Alliance News reporter
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