FTSE 100 holds steady despite turbulence

London’s top index steered clear of falling European stocks yesterday, ending the day more or less the same as it had started.

The FTSE 100 finished up a tiny 0.07%, or 4.34 points, to 5853.76.

It is the second time this week that the index has remained more or less stable in the face of worse news on the continent.

On Monday the FTSE dropped a mere 9.28 points, while Germany’s top index fell 3.6%. The fall on the continent was not as pronounced yesterday. The Dax index in Frankfurt was down 1% by the end of the day, while the Parisbased Cac 40 fell by 1.1%

Shortly after markets closed in the UK, New York’s two main indices, the S&P 500 and the Dow Jones, were down 0.2% and 0.4% respectively.

In London, Shell and BP took a battering. Just a day before, the two oil giants had been soaring on higher oil prices, but as the price of Brent crude dropped 6.4% to around 29 US dollars per barrel, the companies followed suit with drops of their own.

The pound had a bad day against currencies on the other side of the Atlantic and the English Channel. It cost 0.7% fewer US dollars to buy a pound at 1.2345. Against the euro, the pound dropped 0.4% to 1.1425.

The biggest risers on the FTSE 100 were Ocado, up 93.5p to 1772.5p, Hikma, up 123p to 2,490p, Intermediate Capital Group, up 43p to 1,490p, Astrazeneca, up 318p to 8,830p, and Aveva Group, up 131p to 3,709p. The biggest fallers were Pearson, down 33.3p to 431.6p, Carnival, down 51.8p to 908.8p, Meggitt, down 12.1p to 251.9p, Shell ‘B’, down 52.8p to 1,230.6p, and Royal Bank of Scotland, down 4.55p to 108.2p.