FTSE falls as Miners suffer from Chinese data
It was an exceptionally slow day on the London Stock Exchange today with little of note taking place. The majority of the days catalysts came from foreign sources; China’s weaker than expected data and the S&P upgrading the US to AA+ credit rating. China’s data had a massive impact on miners as the nation is the worlds largest buyer of metals, for which the prices fell exponentially as concerns were raised over the demand for them in the near to medium term.
The FTSE itself was down by 11.54 points, or 0.2 percent, at the end of the session to 6,400.45. This could have been much worse had the miners declines not been offset by a few sectors that investors felt were undervalued due to sell-off’s of late, where traders were trying to lock in their profits.
Travel and healthcare were the leading sectors in the index, despite ITV climbing an impressive 3.71 percent, or 4.80 points, to 134.20. The terrestrial broadcaster saw their broadcasting profits rise to £465m last year, a rise of 6 percent and their external revenues increase by 1 percent to £571m.
EasyJet PLC lead the travel industry with gains of 32.00 points, or 2.68 percent, to 1,226.00. The budget airline was considered to be undervalued, along with a series of other travel based stocks and was picked up by bargain hunting investors after their recent gains on the back of a surge in travel stocks.
IMI PLC closed up at 1,287.00, up 31.00 points, or 2.47 percent. IMI completed the purchase of 54,000 Citigroup Global Markets PLC shares for prices between 1251p and 1294p each.
Severn Trent PLC declined by almost 6 percent during the day, continuing their torrid period of trading. However, it was the miners who grabbed most of the negative headlines, with Polymetal International PLC, ANglo AMerican PLC and Rio Tinto PLC all making significant losses and leading the index down with declines of 4.66 percent, 2.84 percent and 2.42 percent respectively.
