London Shares Hold Steady in Cautious Trade
Monday's was a relatively quiet session for the FTSE, providing UK investors with a chance to consolidate recent losses
The FTSE 100 index closed 6.7 points firmer, up 0.1%, at 5,069.61, while the FTSE 250 index rose 30.6 points or 0.3% to 9,477.6.
Markets were closed in Austria, Denmark, Greece, Norway and Switzerland, but Spain's market remained open on Monday and subsequently suffered losses at the hands of its banking sector, riled following the bailout of regional lender CajaSur. The news that the Bank of Spain has had to step in sent the euro more than 1% lower against the US dollar, as sentiment took yet another hit, despite CajaSur accounting for a relatively small portion of the country’s banking system.
London-listed banks were relatively unfazed by the news, however, instead taking their lead from the US, where existing home sales beat expectations to rise 7.6% month-over-month in April.
Standard Chartered, Barclays and HSBC tentatively added 1.2%, 0.7% and 0.2%, respectively.
A handful of mining stocks were also in demand following comments from a Chinese state planning official that the government should be cautious in its move to use tighter fiscal policy to stem the Asian economy’s growth. Hopes that China could delay plans to rein in growth helped fuel Anglo American, Rio Tinto and Kazakhmys between 1.2% and 2.0% higher each.
On the downside, meanwhile, BP continued to pay the price of its oil spill in the gulf of Mexico, where the cost of stemming the flow and cleaning up the damage has so far cost over three-quarters of a billion dollars.
BP topped the list of FTSE 100 casualties with a further fall of 2.7%, while Cairn Energy lost 2.3%, Royal Dutch Shell shed 1.8% and Tullow Oil was off 1.2%.
