All-time high for Ocado as deliveries soar

London’s top index steered clear of falling European stocks yesterday, ending the day more or less flat.

The FTSE 100 finished up 0.07 per cent, or 4.34 points, to 5,853.76.

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.

David Madden, an analyst at CMC Markets, said: “Equity markets are broadly lower this afternoon as the bulls appear to be in retreat.

“The morning session was mixed as some optimism in relation to the easing of lockdowns was doing the rounds. There was no clear direction in European indices this morning and volatility was low.”

Things got worse when New York woke up, and the FTSE handed back some early gains to end the day only just in the green, Madden also said.

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 per cent and 0.4 per cent 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 per cent to around $29 per barrel, the companies followed suit with drops of their own.

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

In company news, Ocado shares hit an alltime high, ending the day up 5.6 per cent at 1,772.5p. The online supermarket revealed that retail revenues surged 40.4 per cent in the past two months.

JD Sports rose 2.6 per cent to close at 518.2p even as the Competition and Markets Authority blocked its takeover of rival Footasylum for £90 million.

Virgin Money said first-half underlying profits more than halved after a £232m hit it expects from bad coronavirus loans. However, it ended the day up 4.4 per cent at 74.4p.

Halfords saw its shares close up 23 per cent at 142p on the news that April had been better than they expected. But Hammerson dropped 14.3 per cent to end at 51.2p after a buyer pulled out of a £400m deal to purchase seven retail parks from the landlord.