30th Jan 2014 12:31
LONDON (Alliance News) - The UK's leading share index has stabilised at lower levels Thursday after briefly rocketing to a high of 6,573.92, a move that has been put down to a trader error, also known as a "fat finger trade", that sent the share price of major constituent HSBC Holdings sharply higher temporarily.
HSBC shares hit a momentary peak of 688.0 pence at 1120 GMT before almost immediately settling back down to 627.80 pence.
Earlier in the morning, a similar error sent Diageo shares to a low of 1,717 pence. It recovered some of the loss immediately, but remains the biggest faller on the blue chip index, down 5.8% at 1,800.50, after its interim results sounded a warning over emerging market growth.
The FTSE 100 has now stabilised from the two shocks and is down 0.3% at 6,524.44.
The markets are now waiting for the release of US GDP data at 1330 GMT. The first reading of fourth-quarter growth is expected to come in at 3.2% annualised, down from 4.1% in the third quarter.
Ahead of the numbers, the smaller UK stock indices are also lower. The FTSE 250 is down 0.3% at 15,647.77 and the AIM All-Share is down 0.7% at 852.04.
Having both lost some ground against the dollar over the morning, the pound and the euro are stable heading into the data release, trading at USD1.6485 and USD1.3595 respectively.
By Jon Darby; [email protected]; @jondarby100
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