The FTSE 100 is looking a bit livelier after Thursday\u2019s rally, posting modest gains early Friday. The blue chips snapped a two-day losing streak yesterday, however, it does look we are now in a phase of consolidation for the index after the big rally. St James Place and JD Sports led the index higher, while GSK and AstraZeneca were among the leading large-cap weightings to push the index up.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Investors punished Future heavily for cutting its revenue forecast after a dip in March. GoCompare got hit by a decline in car insurance pricing while Land Securities fell 2 per cent despite a 5 per cent rise in rental income in the quarter. Healthcare tech company Craneware (CRW) got a boost from Bain Capital confirming its interest, climbing 13 per cent. And Workspace has bundled up its troubles in a profit warning.<\/p>\n
It was a mixed day for US equities on Thursday. The S&P 500 rose 0.41 per cent, boosted by utilities and consumer staples, while tech struggled with the Nasdaq slightly down amid Amazon and Meta losses. The Dow added 0.65 per cent, driven by GE\u2019s 2.8 per cent gain as Qatar selected its engines for Boeing aircraft, while UnitedHealth continued its collapse.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The S&P 500 has notched four straight days in the green this week, up 4.5 per cent. It\u2019s looking a tad near-term overbought and we have a $1.2tn in notional SPX options expiring today with the max pain point at 5,840 \u2013 wouldn\u2019t be surprised to see some pullback from the 5,900 area today. Meta fell 2.5 per cent after news that the company is postponing the launch of its highly anticipated AI model, Behemoth.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Walmart down after saying it will pass on tariff cost increases to consumers \u2013 who are already under a lot of pressure.<\/p>\n
Treasury yields have pulled back sharply on some soft US numbers, dragging yields down across the space. US PPI and Retail sales data indicates both consumers and business buying time in April and hoping the trade war would resolve itself…so can we read much into the data? The main thing now is what happens to bond yields from here. Look also to big changes in the way foreign holders of US Treasuries are taxed, and rules governing US banks\u2019 Treasury holdings…repatriation of dollars…all part of the trade reset. Basically, the US Treasury department is laying the groundwork for countering any yield surge due to foreign selling. A big question for investors is whether the administration goes after equity income as well as bond income.<\/p>\n
By Neil Wilson,\u00a0investor strategist at Saxo UK<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The FTSE 100 is looking a bit livelier after Thursday\u2019s rally, posting modest gains early Friday. The blue…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":87131,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3091],"tags":[51,3647,2441,196,13622,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-106061","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-markets","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-economics","10":"tag-markets","11":"tag-podcasts","12":"tag-the-trader","13":"tag-uk","14":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114517117821360088","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106061","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=106061"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106061\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/87131"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=106061"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=106061"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=106061"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}