Sector movers: Financial services, real estate pace losses

The results of another online poll pointing to increased momentum for the 'Leave' camp ahead of the EU referendum was again weighing on sterling and financial services and real estate investment firms on Tuesday.

According to the latest YouGov poll published in The Times on Tuesday, support for Brexit jumped by three percentage points to 46.0% over the latest week, while support for ‘Remain’ lost another three percentage points to stand at just 39.0%, with 11.0% of voters saying they were undecided and another 4.90% that they would not vote.

As of 14:33 BST cable was down 0.68% to 1.4172, alongside a dip in 10-year German government debt yields into negative territory for the first time ever.

The yield on similarly-dated benchmark Gilts also hit a record low at 1.144%.

Yields on the 10-year Bund retreated both as investors continued to seek out safe havens and on expectations that the Brexit-related uncertainty would act as a drag on growt

"These results alarmed markets and saw our 10-poll average narrow to a slim 0.2pp lead for Remain. The result is due partly to a greater share of online polls in the sample, which have typically shown stronger leads for Leave. But beyond polling noise, it appears that more voters are ‘flirting with Brexit’. For this reason, last week we increased our probability of Brexit to the top end of our 30-40% range, but have not increased it further," analysts at Citi said.

Travel&Leisure stocks were weighed down by stock in one company in particular, Go Ahead. The troubled transport giant told investors to no longer expect 3% margins from its Govia Thameslink Railway franchise, as previously indicated, but rather something closer to 1.5%, because of the cost of strikes and the project to rebuild London Bridge Station.

Front month crude oil futures were down by 0.801% to $49.95 per barrel on the ICE.

Bottom performing sectors so far today
Financial Services 8,231.00 -2.08%
Real Estate Investment & Services 2,583.42 -2.00%
Oil & Gas Producers 6,337.69 -1.78%
Media 6,846.49 -1.77%
Travel & Leisure 8,066.59 -1.77%