Sector movers: Aerospace leads as Rolls-Royce pushes towards record highs

Aerospace and Defence names paced gains on the FTSE 350 as Rolls-Royce full-year numbers pushed its shares back above its late 2018 highs.

The engineer predicted that aircraft flying hours would exceed their pre-pandemic levels over the course of 2024.

That was on top of a 50% beat versus ShoreCap analysts's estimates for its full-year earnings per share.

In the background, it was a buoyant market, with shares of U.S. chipmaker Nvidia surging 16% on the back of its own results.

That saw the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite jump nearly 3% to end the day within a whisker of its all-time highs.

Similarly, in overnight trading Japan's Nikkei-225 had risen past the record highs hit in 1989 on an intraday basis, reportedly drawing cheers from traders in Tokyo.

A mixed batch of economic data in the U.S. however was sufficient to keep a lid on a rebound in gold prices, in turn weighing on precious metals miners' shares.

In particular, the latest U.S. weekly unemployment claims figures surprised with a decline of 12,000 to 201,000 (consensus: 16,000), although economists at Pantheon Macroeconomics remained of the belief that "the labour market will start to look materially weaker in the spring."

US Treasuries remained under pressure on Thursday as well, as did similarly-dated UK Gilts.

That saw the more interest rate sensitive areas of the stock market, such as utilities, soften.

Top performing sectors so far today

Aerospace and Defence 9,779.09 +2.67%

Non-life Insurance 3,415.99 +2.58%

Automobiles & Parts 1,341.76 +2.35%

Industrial Transportation 3,997.09 +2.20%

Real Estate Investment & Services 2,243.95 +2.15%

Bottom performing sectors so far today

Precious Metals and Mining 7,662.22 -2.47%

Electricity 9,390.70 -1.83%

Personal Care, Drug and Grocery Stores 4,102.75 -1.15%

Gas, Water & Multiutilities 5,916.97 -1.00%

Chemicals 9,130.27 -0.94%