London’s FTSE-100 has kicked off Thursday’s session very much on the back foot, with a weak performance across Asian markets setting the pace.
By Tony Cross, Monk Communications
Commodity stocks continue to struggle too with Antofagasta coming under some notable pressure off the back of a broker downgrade, whilst we’ve also got a slew of stocks making the usual Thursday migration ex-dividend. Collectively they’re lopping less than four points off the overall value of the index, although Barratt Developments is the stand-out here as a generous 24.7p pay out knocks around 5% off the value of the stock. At the other end of the board, Barclays is one of the better performers on the day in the wake of some well received earnings, although early gains are already being eroded.
In terms of economic data, the UK Q3 GDP release this morning may attract more attention that usual, being that this is the first number from post-referendum Britain, although the reality is that fundamentally nothing has changed yet. The accompanying narrative is likely to be more political grandstanding than economic reality.
